


Somewhere in the Middle

by brokencake



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-05 04:57:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1806124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokencake/pseuds/brokencake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Vain defiance. She has seen it a thousand times." The Fire Nation fell a century ago after Avatar Roku let the Fire Lord burn. Now, the Southern City has captured the last of a bloodline tainted with death and betrayal. [AU] (discontinued)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. empire

_if i gave you control_

_would you say that we could've saved it?_

_~honest by the neighbourhood_

* * *

"The world needs to be balanced. This is not the way, Sozin. We can be powerful and respected without conquering other nations."

"How can you be so blinded to the obvious, Roku? Our nation is in a prosperous period, the next natural step is to eliminate the weak."

"You will address me as Avatar Roku, like you are supposed to."

"I-"

"I tolerated your colonization of the Earth Kingdom. I tolerated your treatment of Water Tribe traders. I will not tolerate this."

"You are a citizen of the Fire Nation. Your first loyalty is to your nation, to me-"

"You are wrong, Sozin. I belong to the world."

-o-

The airbenders were gone, but Avatar Roku let the Fire Lord burn before the waterbenders could be touched.

-o-

"It's been nineteen years."

The voice comes in Katara's ear, and she tilts her head slightly to the right, eyes still on the water in front of her. The moon's cool light casts shadows over the South's back harbor; cut off from the rest of the Southern City and only accessible through the palace. Each of the dozen soldiers carries a lantern, illuminating the area in a strange mix of warmth and cold. Katara's father is on her right side, rigid, and her brother stands in front, closer to the mouth of the frozen port alongside the formation of Southern soldiers.

"It has," Katara says quietly in reply, blue eyes still transfixed on the murky shadow of a ship on the water, drawing slowly closer. Colonel Aritak shifts beside her, and Katara has to suppress her smile. He can never quite stay still no matter what the situation is.

Everyone's eyes are on the ship. It becomes deathly quiet, except for the sound of snow crunching as Aritak puts his weight on foot and then the other. The ship draws close enough that Katara can make out the dark outline of the Southern City's emblem of three curling waves, carved into the helm of the boat. Katara curls and uncurls her fingers at her side.

Nineteen years.

The ship is almost close enough to the dock to be tied down now. From ahead Sokka shouts, "Prepare the ropes and fenders!", and immediately a third of the soldiers break out of formation, carrying their lanterns further ahead to the wharf. Rope is unwound and tied to the wooden fenders, and finally, the ship is side-by-side with the dock. Someone leans out of the ship to catch the rope tossed by one of the soldiers on the ground. Katara feels herself buzz with a strange sort of excitement, and she looks over at Aritak to see the same sort of dazed expression she's probably wearing.

Once the ship is stable a line of naval troops neatly make their exit. Every other soldier has a grip on the bound hands of a green-clothed person. Lanterns are picked up and the mini-procession of naval soldiers, ground soldiers and prisoners alike comes back towards the palace. At the very end, Katara recognizes the profile of Admiral Hahn coming out of the ship and walking behind the group at a short distance.

"Well, there's Hahn," Aritak leans over to whisper in Katara's ear, snapping her mind out of its nervous racing. Katara lets out a short bark of laughter at Aritak's sour tone, like he's just been told someone ate the last seaweed cookie.

The silence persists again, punctuated with the sounds of a few dozen pairs of feet crunching across the snow. The ground soldiers walk in two lines behind the naval troops and prisoners, and behind the ground soldiers is Hahn, his hands clasped behind his back. Katara can't see his expression but she's sure it's smug. She rolls her eyes but supposes he does (for once) have reason to be smug, considering the precious cargo he's managed to pick up.

The naval troops stop a good three feet away from where Katara is standing with her father and Aritak. The ground soldiers form a solid line behind the naval troops and prisoners. Sokka circles around his soldiers and comes to stand by Hakoda, and Hahn circles around from the other side, leisurely making his way to the head of the group of naval troops. Katara scans her eyes over the group. The naval troops are wearing Earth-style silver armor; the kind that high-ranking soldiers of the Earth army usually wear.

Strange.

"Bring forward the prince," Hahn says to the naval troops. Three figures part from the group. Two clad in blue and silver and one, in the middle, wearing light green.

Katara's brow furrows. She tilts her head the slightest bit to the right and mumbles to Aritak, "Light green, huh?"

"Along with the armor, it should be an interesting briefing," he mumurs back.

The man in the middle - the last prince of the long-collapsed Fire Nation- is pushed forward by the two soldiers holding him. He looks like he's going to stumble for a split second but quickly steadies himself. One side of his face catches the light and Katara lets out a small gasp before she can stop herself. Pink and red scar tissue mars the skin around his eye, and from her limited healing knowledge Katara can tell the scar is very old, as if he's had it since he was a young child.

"It's customary for prisoners to bow in the presence of the Chief," Hahn says to the prince. The prince stands to his full height -he looks about as tall as Aritak, who's one of the tallest in the City- and stares straight ahead, his scar fully illuminated by lantern light. Despite being a prisoner, he looks almost menacing.

A few heartbeats pass with no reaction from the prince.

"You heard Admiral Hahn," Hakoda says pleasantly. The prince continues to stare, and Katara wants to roll her eyes. Vain defiance will not help anyone. Of course he realizes that. After another short length of silence, her father says icily, "I order you to bow."

Something sparks in the prince's eyes and he starts to open his mouth, but the taller of the two soldiers restraining him shoots him a look and the firebender's mouth snaps shut. Painfully slow, he starts to crouch, then kneels down, and finally touches his head to the snow.

"You may rise," Hakoda says after a few moments. With the same slowness, the prince rises, amber eyes glinting. "Private Urago and Private Kira," Hakoda says, acknowledging the two soldiers holding the prince; first the taller man and then the more petite woman. "Lady Katara will accompany you the prince's cell." Katara nods once, curtly, at this.

"Colonel Aritak will accompany the other prisoners to their cells with the rest of the unit. Admiral Hahn and Major Sokka will follow me. Dismissed."

Aritak touches Katara's arm just as she's about to walk over to her assigned trio. "You have your waterskin?" he asks softly.

Katara laughs at the concern in his eyes. "Yeah, I do. Don't worry, I don't think the prince can firebend very well in these temperatures anyway."

"Fine, laugh at me for being concerned," Aritak says, throwing his hands up in mock surrender.

Katara grins at him, buzzing. They've captured the prince and everything will be better now. Her mind swirls with the thought. "Let's move. I think my father's glaring at us."

She takes off towards Private Urago and Kira without looking back. They both bend at the waist upon seeing her approaching.

"I trust that you have a blindfold?" Private Urago says, and Katara nods once, quickly unzipping her side pack/ waterskin creation and taking out a blue bag made of thick material. She hands it to Urago and he in turn slips it over the prince's head, pulling the drawstring at the bottom closed just enough so that it doesn't slip off. Katara zips her pack again and gestures for the privates to follow her to the palace's back entrance.

Her father nods at her as she passes through the doorway, while Hahn's signature self-satisfied pout seems to be rejuvenated upon seeing the prince's blindfolded form. Sokka grins at his sister, mouthing, Getting to lock up the bad guys now, huh?

Katara resists the urge to stick out her tongue at him, but shoots a small smile at him all the same.

Once inside the palace, Katara turns left, leading down the wide main hallway, and then turns right, starting off on a chain of long, icy passages. The palace is expansive, with only about a quarter of it actually occupied full-time by Katara's family and the occasional group of soldiers or generals with nowhere else to go, and most of those areas are in the front. Back here, nearly every hallway is dark and only dully lit up in some places by dying torches. They pass by several guards but no one else.

After a few minutes, the stone flooring gives way to cold metal, and they approach a door flanked by two guards. Upon seeing Katara and the tall green-wearing prisoner, the guards' eyes widen slightly and they immediately open the door. A short flight of stairs leads into a wing of twenty cells, split evenly on each side, and all of them empty.

"Evening, Lady Katara," one of the two guards pacing the length of the wing says. He nods. "Private Urago."

"It's been a while," Urago says, breaking into a grin and saluting the guard. So they recognize each other. Katara lives in the palace and still can't quite recognize the guard. "It's more night than evening now, eh?"

The guard laughs. "We can never tell down here."

Urago prods the prince forward, and Katara says, "We can take off the bag now." He nods, reaching out to loosen the drawstring and pulling the bag off. The prince huffs out a breath, looking around his new home with a calculating gaze.

"Should've kept the bag on after all," the guard remarks upon seeing the prince's scar. Katara finds herself looking at the scar as well. In the light, it looks less harsh, but still bad. Katara wonders what kind of freak accident the firebender had to get himself into to get such a mark.

The guard takes a key out of one of his pockets and uses it to unlock one of the cells in the middle. Urago and Kiro shove the prince forward into the cell, and he goes in with little resistance. The firebender settles down in the middle of the cell with his legs crossed. Urago and Kiro take a few backwards and stand by the guard while Katara walks right up to the cell.

She fleetingly thinks about asking the prince if he knows the old Fire dialect, entertaining the idea for just a second before letting it go. Instead, she launches into the introduction that every prisoner is given some version of.

"You will be given two meals a day," she starts, looking right at the prince. He stares right back at her, and when their eyes meet, Katara feels a jolt. "The rest of the captured firebenders will be held in a different wing of cells for as long as all of you are here. You are expected to comply with all interrogations and provide all information asked of you if you want them and yourself to live."

"Empty threats," the prince says. His voice has a rasp to it, but Katara can't tell whether it's from thirst or if it's always been like that. "Your father would never kill the firebenders. They're too important."

"You overestimate their importance. We would and will kill them if you fail to cooperate," Katara replies easily. The only one who is really important is the man in front of her. "We have captured hundreds of firebenders in the past. These firebenders are no different."

Angry amber meets blue. "Except they are firebenders under my command."

"The only person they and you will respond to from now on is the Chief of the Southern City and Chief Arnook of the Northern City. You have absolutely no authority."

"I do not obey the call of cowards."

Katara raises an eyebrow. Vain defiance. She has seen it a thousand times.

"And I do not entertain foolish resistance." She turns on her heel and says, "Private Urago and Private Kira, you may leave to your homes or escorted to accommodations by a guard. I need to leave for the briefing."

-o-

"They were hidden among Earth nobility," Hakoda says flatly.

"For nineteen years," Sokka adds, his voice far away.

Katara can feel the shift of the moon starting to fade away. They've been in this room far too long; her father, Sokka, Aritak, Hahn, and herself. And this is only the first of a series of briefings. First this, then the briefing including the mission unit, all armed forces, and finally one open to the public.

Hahn straightens in his seat. "Of course, the only way this could have happened was with the cooperation of the Earth King."

Stating the obvious. Katara bites back a remark about his advancing problem solving skills.

"We need to search the King's palace," Aritak says.

"We can't; or at least not under the Southern City's name. The Earth people love their king," Sokka replies, tapping his fingers on the table. "There's already the trouble with Chief Arnook moving in more of his forces into the Earth lands. We can't create distrust towards the Southern side if we want to gain more support for the Southern City."

"The lack of our enforcements in the Earth lands is the only advantage we have," Katara says, more to herself than anyone else.

They'll need to convince Arnook to issue a search warrant for the Northern force. She bites her tongue, looking at Hahn. She'll have to talk about this with her father later. "It's almost sunrise. Chief Arnook's representatives are coming in tomorrow. Dad needs his rest."

"Thank you, Katara, but-"

"It's late, Dad. We've said all that can be said." Katara catches her father's eye at the last part, and he seems to understand.

"Hahn, give me a quick run of the numbers."

"Six injuries on our side, ten injuries on their side, fourteen captured in total including the prince."

"And the armor? Where did that come from?"

"Hush money, essentially," Hahn says, brow furrowing.

"And you accepted it?"

"As a gift."

"Very well. This meeting is dissolved. Katara, you will be staying behind."

Hahn and Aritak bend at the waist when they stand before leaving. Sokka leaves seconds after, departing with a nod in Hakoda's direction.

"Why don't we get some fresh air, Katara?" Hakoda says.

"Of course," Katara replies, following Hakoda out of the meeting place and back to the palace's back entrance. Her father takes a seat on the topmost step leading up to the door, facing the distant harbor. Katara settles down next to him and looks ahead at the lightening sky.

"You still don't completely trust Admiral Hahn," Hakoda says. It's a statement.

"No, I don't. He only joined the Southern forces two years ago, Dad."

"It's a long time, Katara. A lot can change in seconds, let alone two years. You think he still has loyalty to the Northern City."

Katara continues to stare ahead. "It's not- maybe. I don't think Hahn has loyalty to anyone in particular. He only wants what will bring him the most glory. I don't want him to know anything more than he needs to."

There's no reply for a few moments.

"What was it you wanted to discuss?"

"We need to get Arnook to authorize a Northern crackdown on the nobility."

Hakoda sighs. "I realized. But there's no way Arnook will order that. He's already burned a few bridges with the Earth people by sending in additional troops. He won't go back and burn more."

"We have the prince now. Arnook might become flexible in exchange for some information."

"They have the Fire princess. We don't know how much this prince knows that his sister doesn't."

"We'll still be able to crush the rebels, though, with the prince. He'll definitely know more about the other rebels' whereabouts than his sister. And now the rebels have lost the face of their resistance. Arnook will have to give up control of some land to us and send in more forces to help hunt down the rebels."

"They'll be a lot of false leads and lies, too, though. It'll take a while."

That silences Katara. Arnook is always one - or ten, if Katara's honest with herself - steps ahead. The Northern forces have more waterbenders, more of the Earth and Fire lands, more resources, more minds.

"We also have the old Fire library remains," Katara says, carefully. She looks at her father and tries to gauge his immediate reaction.

Exasperation.

With a tired voice he says, "We've gone over this too many times, Katara. The remains are not useful. All they contain is the past. You need to focus on the present and future."

"There's still so much to be learned from them, though. They could have something important, something that gives us an advantage-"

"Stop, Katara. You've been translating those documents since the second they arrived last year and you haven't found anything useful yet."

"Some of my translations are probably wrong. If only-"

Hakoda turns and looks at her, and Katara feels like all of her thoughts are exposed to her father with the way he seems to see right through her.

"You will not go to the prince for translations."

Katara internally winces. She shouldn't have brought it up, of course he knew-

"I wasn't going to-"

"I forbid you."

Katara simmers but knows better than to press the issue.

The sky continues to brighten.

"There's something I wanted to talk to you about too, Katara."

Katara looks over at her father, immediately knowing his topic of choice. "Dad, we already talked about this-"

"You can't hold it off forever, Katara. People will start talking."

"Maybe a bit of gossip is a good thing. It'll keep them distracted."

"That would be fine, Katara, if you weren't in such a position. The city looks to us for example."

"I can't get married, Dad," Katara says quietly. Not that she's completely opposed to the idea, but she doesn't feel any need to. She's only seventeen.

"You have complete freedom of choice, Katara. I won't be forcing anyone onto you." Hakoda lets out a long breath. "I won't force you to marry either, but you have to realize it's either marriage or enlisting in the waterbenders' forces."

"I can start teaching new waterbending recruits."

"You're not a master and you don't have hands-on experience. That's not possible."

Good enough to fight but not good enough to teach.

"I'm nearly a master. A few more months of training-"

"Katara."

"I could take on a full-time role of strategist. That would give me a position in the forces." Strategy is where Katara has always been best.

"No general or commander would listen to you. You need field experience in fighting before they'll consider what you say."

Katara quiets, her mind racing. She needs more time to go through the old Fire documents and

"Give me three months. If I don't master waterbending by then I'll make my choice."

Hakoda looks at his daughter.

"Three months, then, on your birthday. You'll make your choice then. If you are to enlist in the waterbenders' forces, you will go straight to combat training."

She can't leave the Southern City, and most of the waterbending forces are deployed straight away to the Earth or Fire lands. Sokka is already gone on army missions for most of the time. There needs to be someone around to help Hakoda.

And of course, there are the old library documents.

"Your hopes are too high, Katara."


	2. rays

_chasing visions of our futures_

_one day we'll reveal the truth_

_~youth by daughter_

* * *

"Three months, huh?"

Aritak shoves his blunt wooden sword towards Katara, and Katara deflects the attack fairly easily, countering with a slash aimed at Aritak's stomach with her own training sword. Aritak brings up his wrist effortlessly and Katara's sword is forced upwards.

"Unless I master waterbending before then. Aikana says it's possible."

Katara does a quick assessment of Aritak's stance and tries to find weaknesses. She thinks she spies an opening by his left shoulder, and knocks his sword forcefully towards the right and makes a mad swipe for his shoulder. Aritak catches the tip of her sword with the hilt of his. In a quick flurry of movement he twists her sword around and jabs for her stomach. Katara is a split second too late to defend and the blow catches her right below her rib cage.

She scowls while Aritak smiles at her. His tenth consecutive win.

Katara begrudging lays her sword on the floor, with the middle of it resting lightly against her toes. "I want to knock that look off your face," she says, half-serious, and she makes a fist with her right hand and touches it to her left in a bow. Aritak mimics her once she's straightened back up.

"You'd do well in the waterbenders' forces," Aritak says. He starts to walk across the training chamber's pure white stone flooring. His uniform jacket rests on a bench on the other side.

Katara walks after him, picking up her waterskin pack and slinging across her left shoulder to rest on her right hip. She smooths down her blue tunic and bends to re-tuck her trousers into her military-style shoes.

"Who'd look after my father?" she replies, voice muffled. "Besides, I'm not terribly good at hand-to-hand combat. I'll have to complete combat training before I can join."

Aritak shrugs on his jacket. "You're lethal with water even if you're not a master yet. I doubt you'd ever even need much hand-to-hand combat training."

Katara takes extra time on her other shoe. She can still feel Aritak's light blue eyes on her, evaluating, and she wishes he didn't know her so well.

"You're making excuses."

Katara stands, the top of her head barely surpassing Aritak's shoulder. "I need to stay here," she repeats.

"For the other option? To get married?" he says, his tone teasing, and Katara scowls at him. 

"If anyone is going to get married, it's you," Katara says lightly. "You've already gotten a few proposals."

Aritak makes a face. "From pompous Northern girls."

"I'll bet there's some Southern girls hoping to end up with you."

Aritak rolls his eyes. "Stop changing the subject. This is about the Fire documents, then."

"Maybe."

"It's been a year, Katara," Aritak says, not sounding too different from her father the day before. "Is it really worth having to stay at the palace when you could be helping out on the forces? You always wanted to make a difference."

"I can make a difference by staying here too. If I master waterbending, I'll be able to train the new military waterbender recruits and finish up my translations at the same time," she says. They exit the training chamber side by side and Katara pauses to exchange a quick greeting with the guard stationed at the entrance. "Besides, I could always join the forces later."

They walk down the ice-carved halls in silence for a few minutes. In the daylight, the frozen passages glimmer, and here, in the front half of the palace, the halls are wider and busier, and Katara finds herself greeting about a dozen guards and servants in just a five minute walk. Katara and Aritak find their feet automatically taking them to the kitchen.

"Looks like there's stewed sea prunes for lunch," Katara says. The strong smell permeates the whole kitchen, infused with the salt-tinged air of steamed seaweed, and Aritak makes a face. They excuse me their way all to the way to the back, passing by several kitchen islands with cooks and kitchen hands working furiously to prepare pots of the sea prunes and platters of different vegetables, all of which are native to the Earth lands.

"Looks like the Earth King really went all out with his hush money," Aritak says, eyeing the exotic plant life being washed and cut. Katara recognizes some of the more common greens and roots but others are completely foreign to her.

"Long Feng definitely looks like he has something to hide," Katara says grimly.

Aritak drops his voice a notch and says, "That search warrant needs to be issued soon."

"Arnook's representatives should be arriving later in the afternoon," Katara says, forehead creasing. She feels a strange sense of foreboding. "We'll need to work something out; today." She sees a kitchen hand lingering by her and Aritak, and Katara shoots her a quick smile, sending the girl scurrying. Katara glances over at Aritak and he nods.

Later.

A wide cabinet is nestled into the far corner of the kitchen, and Katara makes a beeline for it while Aritak looks around to scavenge for stools. Sifting through the cabinet's contents - various bunches of dried seaweed crackers and cookies, packed carefully into small containers- she chooses her usual salted crackers and digs through to find the over-sweetened cookies for Aritak.

"I couldn't find any seats," Aritak says, returning to the cabinet empty-handed. He shrugs apologetically. "The head chef's got everyone working on lunch today."

Katara sits down on the floor and pats the space next to her. ""There's plenty of room."

Aritak settles down without hesitation. The smell of sea prunes seems to get stronger with each passing second, finally moving Aritak to say, "I think I'll go to my family's house for lunch. I need to spend more time with them anyway."

Katara shakes her head, smiling. "Just make sure you're back in time for the meeting."

-o-

"Shackle him, please. Colonel Aritak and I will be taking him up to the main meeting room."

Her father had told her to go retrieve the prince for proof to the Northerners, and Aritak had just wandered back into the palace after lunch at his family's, so Katara had dragged him along as well. All of the officers of rank private and up are heading up to the meeting room at the moment.

"Of course, Lady Katara," the guard says, slipping out his key and unlocking the cell's door. The prince barely lifts his head as another guard goes in with handcuffs and twists the prince's arms behind his back before binding them.

"Taking the palace pet for a walk?" the prince says dryly, his voice surprisingly strong, but still with the hint of a rasp.

"Don't flatter yourself. We treat our pets better," Katara says easily, watching as the prince is hauled to his feet.

"So are the good people of the Water Empire, who treat animals better than humans," the prince replies, his voice meant to cut.

"I wouldn't be so quick to call yourself a human."

The prince's expression clouds. "I forgot that your people don't consider anyone outside of the people of the Water Empire humans."

"And I remember how your people obliterated a whole race."

"You-" the prince starts, nearly snarling, but Aritak cuts him off with a military-trained death glare. The prince clenches his jaw, and for a second Katara thinks he's going to retaliate, but he stays quiet.

"Here's the bag," Katara says, retrieving the blue-colored cloth sack from before from her waterskin pack. She hands it off to Aritak, who slips it over the prince's head as they ascend the stairs.

They navigate the halls until they're back at the front of the palace. A guard stands, waiting, by the usual meeting room. He stands taller when he sees Katara and Aritak approaching.

"The meeting with the representatives of Chief Arnook has been moved to the War Council room," he says after bowing.

Katara shoots an alarmed glance at Aritak.

"Thank you, you may be dismissed."

Picking up their pace, they make their way up a flight of stairs at the end of the hall and onto the second floor. They walk down the hall before turning right into another hall with only two rooms: the War Council room and a small storage space. Aritak pulls the bag off of the prince, not bothering to undo the drawstring first, and they walk into the meeting to be greeted by a roomful of grim faces. Slowly, everyone seated the at long table in the middle turns to look at the arriving trio, various degrees of surprise playing across their expressions.

"So this is the prince," one of the men at the head of the table says. Katara's eyes flit quickly over his dark blue eyes and his sharp features. Major Irek. His mind is even sharper; one of the greatest in the Northern City and Water Empire. Second in command to Chief Arnook.

Katara looks for her father and Sokka in her periphery, finding them at the other end of the table, as expected. Their faces are carefully placid.

"Your name, prisoner," Irek says.

The prince is still.

"He has a bit of an insolent streak," Hakoda says. He continues forcefully, "State your name, prince."

"Zuko."

Katara replays the name in her head, the syllables unfamiliar.

"Your father's name," Irek continues.

"Ozai."

"Your mother."

"Ursa."

"What is your sister's nickname for you?"

The prince's lips become slightly upturned. "Zuzu." No one smiles.

Irek looks at the prince for a few moments, his gaze hard, and the prince stares right back. Finally, Irek turns his head away and nods. "This is the prince all right."

"Then he is dismissed back to his cell," Hakoda says. "Colonel Aritak, please take him right outside the door. The two waiting guards will escort the firebender back."

Katara takes a seat next to Sokka, and a few moments later, Aritak sits next to Katara.

"For those who have just joined us, General Irek has informed us that the Northern forces sent a message addressed to Chief Arnook yesterday," Hakoda starts, looking at Katara and Aritak. "There was a struggle between a Northern encampment and a group of Earth rebels."

Not too unusual, Katara thinks. Why does this warrant a meeting in the War Council room? She sweeps her eyes around the table. There's a lot of people, maybe they didn't fit-

"They were carrying fairly sophisticated Earthern military weapons," her father finishes.

Aritak says almost immediately, "We need to toughen up the disarmament terms."

And unfamiliar Northerner, who Katara can tell is a lieutenant by the six-pronged star on his jacket, says, "Chief Arnook has already starting drafting amendments to them. The illegal market for weapons is expanding, though. We don't know how effective the disarmament terms will be with it."

"It's worth a try," says another Northerner, from the other side of the table, and the conversation begins in earnest.

Dozens of suggestions are thrown around for a few minutes. Start putting up warnings for rebels. Detain the rebels. Strip the Earth lands of all of their weapons.

Once people start talking over each other and no one is really listening to what the other is saying, Hakoda calls out, "Order!" and everyone immediately quiets.

"We can't start punishing or detaining rebels yet. We'll only give them martyrs," Hakoda says. "We need to fix the problem from the root. It's best if there's a crackdown on the nobility."

General Irek raises one eyebrow. "I'm assuming that crackdown will be from the Southern side?"

"Our forces are not yet strong enough in numbers for a crackdown, I'm afraid. My city only has control over about 15% of the Earth lands," Hakoda replies. "Unless, of course, the North would like to lend us more men and more land?"

Irek's eyes narrow at the mention of the old sore spot between the North and South.

"Will all respect, Chief, why would a complete crackdown on the nobility be the best way to handle this situation? Wouldn't we create more resentment for the Water Empire? And among the Earth lands' most powerful, at that."

Katara speaks. "It's been apparent for a while, General Irek, that the nobility in the Earth lands is corrupt. Not to their own people, but they've been plotting under the noses of the Water Empire for too long."

Irek looks doubtful, but nods, and Katara finds it in herself to continue.

"We know about the violation of the disarmament terms. We've known about rebel attacks for a while, but we haven't taken drastic actions for fear of turning back support. We're doing enough to bring down the issues to a barely manageable level. You know, I'm assuming, how the prince was hidden among nobility?"

Another terse nod from the general.

"There are too many traitors in the Earth lands for that to happen. Hiding a prince and princess takes a whole network of people, from commoners, to servants, to nobility, to king. The second our control slips, it'll snap. And I think you realize that, General."

General Irek smiles thinly. "You've raised a sharp girl, Chief Hakoda."

"You should have expected nothing less."

"A crackdown can, however, also cause the collapse of our empire. The Earth people will start to draw comparisons to the Fire Nation."

"Our empire will start weakening from the inside," Sokka says. "If we don't stop the corruption of the Earth government, the Water Empire will start to decay."

"It's still a gamble, Major," Irek replies.

"But we have to take it," Sokka shoots back. "If we look at the Earth and Water rebellion that took down the Fire Nation, the Fire Lord had become overconfident and let his growing empire weaken. The water tribes betrayed him. The Earth King betrayed him. And in the end, the Avatar betrayed him."

"The Water Empire's combined forces are stronger than the Fire Lord's ever were."

"But our potential weakness is still the Earth elite. All it would take is one or two respected Earth generals to outright turn against us, and the rest of the military forces' loyalty would fall to their native land."

"And the Fire colonies? I haven't heard them mentioned once."

There's a few moments of silence. The Fire colonies have always been the tricky spot. The most angry but the most powerless. They would leap at the chance of rebellion. All they need is someone to look up to.

To Katara's surprise, it is Private Urago who answers.

"The Fire colonies are weak and disorganized, but if they were given the chance for rebellion by Earth example, I'm sure they wouldn't hesitate to jump at the opportunity," he says, echoing Katara's thoughts. "By letting the Earth corruption continue, we're giving the Fire colonies a force to look up to."

Irek still looks unconvinced. "However, last time that I checked, the Southern forces were working on conquering the remaining Fire colonies. I'm sure by the time the Southern military takes control of all of them, they will be too weak to pose much of a threat."

A jab at the South.

The room descends into silence again. The first one to speak loses, Katara thinks.

"However, you do bring up a few good points," Irek says finally. "I will bring this option to Chief Arnook's attention but I can't make any guarantees. I also trust, Chief Hakoda, that you will be starting interrogations with the prince soon?"

"Of course."

"Then please make sure to get all information he provides to us in the North. We'll need it if we're to go through with the crackdown."

Katara glances quickly at her father as he nods and knows immediately that he is not planning on opening all information to them.

-o-

"Relax, you seem a bit jittery," Aikana says, winding a tendril of water up her arm.

Katara inhales for eight counts and then exhales for seven before drawing the water from her pot again, and letting it inch up her arm and form a tentacle.

"I take it that the meeting with Arnook's people didn't go too well?" Aikana says, drawing the water off her arm and into a compacted sphere of ice. Katara mirrors her.

"No, it went pretty well, actually," Katara says. Aikana stretches out her ice as a water whip and Katara continues to follow her. "But there's always something else to worry about."

"Is this about your father's deal with you?"

"Partially," Katara admits. The older woman's eyes tell her to go on. "I can't join the military, Aikana. Strategy is different, I can sit here and talk about moving soldiers and how to conquer Fire colonies, but I can't imagine myself on the front lines."

"You'd do well. You're one of my best students. I'd to hate to boost your ego, but maybe even the best."

Katara offers a small smile but says, "Someone has to stay here to help out my father. Sokka's already gone for most of the time." She tries not to sound defensive as she gives the reasons she's always given. "I could teach new recruits with you, couldn't I?"

A look of doubt crosses Aikana's features.

"You said I could master waterbending by the deadline, though."

"I don't doubt that," Aikana shakes her head slightly. "But I don't know how willing new recruits will be to take instructions from an eighteen-year old who hasn't been in the military." She thinks for a moment. "I could figure it out, though. Take you on as an apprentice of sorts."

Katara grins. "You'd love that. Another way for you to boss me around."

Aikana allows a tiny smile to grace her delicate features. She doesn't have the sort of face expected to have a rough personality like hers attached to it. Her cropped hair falls forward as she crouches slightly into a fighting stance.

Katara mimics her, and within seconds, they're exchanging blows of water.

When they're both taking a short break, slipping back into warm-ups, Sokka appears at the entrance to the training chamber. Aikana notices him first and calls out, "Here to fight, Sokka?"

Katara guides the water she'd been bending back into a pot. Sokka smiles. "Not today, Aikana."

"Poor boy doesn't want to be pummeled. Can't say I blame him," Aikana says loudly to Katara. Katara smiles, albeit a bit apprehensively.

"I need to talk to Katara. Sorry to end your training early today," her brother says. Aikana frowns and threatens to damage Sokka's internal organs but eventually lets Katara go.

As soon as they've left the training chamber, Sokka says, "Dad wanted me to convince you to join the miliary." They start to walk through the halls with Katara blindly following Sokka.

"And you're not going to try to convince me?"

"Nope. It'd be pointless, right?" Sokka says, glancing at his sister.

"Pretty much."

"Yeah, I guessed as much, " he says with a sigh. "But I'll just give you the main point he wanted me to make. General Irek was wondering why only Dad's son and not his daughter is in the military, especially since the Southern City pushed so much for equality in the military. It's not too big of a deal, but I think Dad thinks it's reflecting badly that the Southern Chief's only daughter isn't involved militarily after the whole deal with, uh, Gran-gran."

Sokka stumbles over Gran-gran's name and Katara still feels a pang hit her at the mention. It's been four years since she died but they still barely bring up her name.

"I get that. But I'll get around it. Aikana said she'll pull some strings, let me be her assistant. That's military involvement. I might even take place of one of the other trainers."

"You're capable of so much more, Katara. I know you are. Dad knows you are. Aikana knows you are. I don't want to force you into doing anything, of course, but I just don't understand why."

Katara doesn't answer and instead starts paying attention to where they're going.

"Kitchen?"

Sokka accepts the change of subject. He shrugs and grins. "I'm hungry."

"Didn't you just have lunch?"

"More of an appetizer. I think there's some leftover sea prunes, I should have some of those."

-o-

"Lady Katara?"

"Yes?" Katara draws closer to the guard. She was (ridiculously) hoping she could have slipped into the underground cells without being recognized, but- "My father sent me to check on the prince. I didn't have time until now."

Katara is suddenly glad she decided against coming in the middle of the night. She's already wearing a black robe over her usual blue clothes. At least since it's the evening, her appearance in the hall with holding cells isn't completely strange.

"The prince was moved into the interrogation cells hours ago," the guard says.

Katara smiles apologetically. "I was only half-listening to my father so I must have missed it when he said that. Would you mind telling me which cell he's in?"

"Eastern side, wing 3."

Katara grips the papers in her hand more tightly.

"Thank you. Good evening."

She treads silently through the halls, buttoning the front of her black robe. Katara takes the longest possible route to the eastern side of the palace, even though she's already far enough away from it, being in the western part. It'll be hard explaining why she's walking around the palace dressed in black; carrying papers written in a dead language. And if word reaches her father through a military officer, Hakoda will probably take the documents and burn them himself.

At the start of the hallway holding the interrogation cells stand two guards. They're both still until they recognize Katara and immediately bow before one of them asks, "What brings you here, Lady Katara?"

Katara flashes the documents, hoping the guard doesn't get too good of a look at them. "My father sent me to prep some basic information of the prince as a base for the interrogations tomorrow."

"Pardon me, lady, but I thought that Major Sokka had already-"

"There were a few things he missed that I have written on here. Since the major's leaving early tomorrow I offered to come back in his place," Katara says easily.

The guard still looks doubtful.

"I trust that there is water in the cell?" Katara won't need it, since she has her waterskin, but she takes the opportunity to remind the guard of her bending.

"Of course."

"Then it'll be no issue."

Katara stands and watches the guard expectantly for a few minutes. Whoever speaks or moves first loses.

The guard finally opens the door and Katara breezes past the entrance. She passes doors one and two, which are guarded even though they hold no one, and then stands before three. There's only one more door marked with a four before the hall finishes in a dead end.

"Lady Katara," the guard says in acknowledgement before bowing. It's not his place to ask questions and he immediately opens the door.

Katara moves forward into the room. The door closes behind her. It's dimly lit, and unlike the grouped-together holding cells, behind each door in the interrogation wing is only a single cell, directly opposite the door, with a wide space in between for the interrogator. A single chair stands in the middle of the space. Katara quickly pulls up her hood to cover her head. She'd forgotten the layout of the rooms. She doesn't want the prince to immediately recognize her.

" _Ogenki desuka_?" she says.

There's a moment of hesitation before the reply comes, incredulous and cautious. " _Bakkin_." She hears the prince shift closer to the bars, and a weak flame briefly appears in his palm, highlighting his face. A fleeting look of surprise crosses his features before his eyes narrow in contempt. His next words come in the modern language.

"You? Have they already run out of interrogation methods?" He has the audacity to bark out a laugh. "If I didn't talk before I'm sure as hell not going to talk to you."

Katara sees that the prince is completely unmarked and smirks. They've only gone through the preliminary psychological methods so far. He hasn't seen anything.

"I'm a military-grade waterbender. I can encase you in ice and leave and not lose any sleep over it, firebender," Katara snaps out. "Watch yourself."

"And kill your greatest source? I doubt it."

The corners of Katara's mouth curve upwards. "We have healers that can bring you back from the brink of death. Killing you would be merciful, but I believe that hypothermia isn't death," she says. "Unless your kind fall at the slightest sickness."

"Why are you here?"

"You speak the old Fire dialect."

He is not stupid enough to deny it. "You know that already."

"You are to translate words and phrases from the dialect into modern language. I have documents that need translation."

"And why should I?" The prince has now retreated back into his cell, and he sits leaning against the back wall casually. For some reason, this infuriates Katara.

"I am not asking for a favor. It is an order."

The prince's eyes glint gold as he thinks over something. "An order that, interestingly enough, didn't come in with the other hundred pieces of information asked of me today."

"It is still an order," Katara says, but she sounds weak even to herself.

"Isn't it late for the lady of the house to be wandering around in interrogation cells?"

Katara grits her teeth. This bastard prince thinks he can- "You are shackled in an underground cell in the South Pole, with no bending, and a waterbender as the only other living person in the same room. I would watch my tongue."

"Why do you look like you're about to commit a crime? I don't believe black is a suitable color for someone to wear in their own house."

Katara seethes. In a few quick movements she has the water in her waterskin on her arm and ready to strike the prisoner.

"Why did you respond?" she asks.

"To?" The prince asks calmly, despite the water on Katara's arm.

"My question at the beginning. I asked you how you were and you said fine."

"When someone asks me a question I answer."

"And you didn't think it was strange that someone was talking to you in a dead language from a fallen nation?"

The prince stares silently. Katara gets a sick feeling in her stomach as she curls her fingers. The water starts to freeze and form the tip of an ice dagger.

"The answer, firebender?"

When it's clear she's not getting a response Katara flicks her wrist to draw the water off of her and guides it back into her waterskin. She can feel amber eyes on her back as she turns and walks back out of the door.


	3. now

_but i'm a believer_

_that there's a fool in all of us_

_~lived a lie by you me at six_

* * *

"Come on, we need to check out the food stalls." Katara glances back at the girl behind her; startled out of her thoughts. Raina clutches at her stomach in mock agony and a strand of dark hair falls forward from her pearl-comb adorned updo. "Please, Katara? We can come back to the stationary later."

"Your appetite's going into Sokka territory," Katara says, cracking a smile. "Didn't we just eat at your house? Your mom even made those fancy cakes because of General Irek."

"That was tea, and I couldn't even eat too many of the cakes because my mom kept shooting me looks," Raina protests. "Besides, like Sokka himself says, if it doesn't have meat-"

"-then it's a snack," Katara finishes, knowing her brother's saying all-too-well. Raina's eye is already wandering up ahead in the market. "Alright, let me just buy this ink and I'll head there with you."

Katara opens up her pack to dig around for the four copper piece price while Raina darts ahead. The man selling stationary wraps the bottle of ink in a small stretch of cloth and hands it to Katara. She drops the copper pieces into his palm and wishes him a good day.

The market is unusually busy and all of the stalls seem brighter and the merchandise showier. Katara looks around and she thinks she spots a few of the visiting Northerners wandering the markets; standing out only because of the slightly purple hues they don; a sign of high-class in the North. Katara follows a steady flow of people on the right side of the markets' streets up to the food stalls' area. She steps forward into the smell of stewing sea prunes first, then baked rolls, and then more and more smells start to drift her way until she can't distinguish them from one another.

She picks up her pace as she walks past all of the different stalls, heading for the seaweed-noodles vendor that Raina has probably made a beeline for, but then slows down when she picks up the stinging air of cooking spices. Momentarily forgetting Raina, she wanders in chase of the spicy smell, and finds herself at a small noodle cart.

The person manning the cart brightens when he sees her. "Ah, Lady Katara. I thought you might find your way here."

Katara reaches for her pack and smiles back at the man. "I'll have the usual, please." She pauses momentarily to think, and then says, "Actually, I'll take an extra helping this time."

"A good decison, Lady," the vendor replies with a toothy smile. Then his expression dims. "We haven't been able to ship as many spices into the City these days anyway."

Katara ducks her head back down to fish out more coins. "Why is that?" She asks, making as if she doesn't know the problem just so they don't descend into silence.

"The Earth policies are getting stingier. Some of the men who went out to get their monthly shipments came back empty-handed."

Katara looks back up and shoots a wistful glance at the second bowl of packed-up noodles. She's three copper pieces short. "I'll have to bring it up with my father," she says, even though her father is well-aware of the issue, and the man shoots her a grateful smile. Katara holds out the copper pieces in her hand to him and smiles apologetically. "It looks like I'll only be taking one of the packages. I'm short a few coppers."

"It's fine," the man says. "You can send someone to drop by to give the rest of the money some other time." Katana must've made a strange face because the man quickly adds, "Of course, you don't have to. What's a few coppers anyway?"

"No, no, it's not that-" Katara starts, and the man's gaze wanders to over her shoulder.

"It's okay, Katara, take the second package. I'll pay," someone says from behind her.

Katara tenses. The person behind her reaches out an arm to put a silver piece in the man's palm. The man starts to hand a few copper pieces back in change but he's stopped by.

He frowns slightly. "With all due respect, Admiral, I'm only going to take the fair price."

"I've heard about the troubles a lot of the vendors are having with imports. It's no problem, really."

The man still looks unconvinced, but after a bit of coaxing from Katara, he retracts his change with, "You're too kind, Admiral. Thank you."

The man turns to his next customer and Katara turns to look at her side. "Thank you, Hahn. Pardon me, but Raina's waiting for me at a stall up ahead." She readjusts the two packages in her hands and starts walking away leisurely without looking back. "I should be going."

Much to her dismay, a group of people crowded around a jewelry stall halts her progress across the market after only a few feet. She first hears Hahn step towards and then sees him in her periphery.

"Can I talk to you for a moment?"

Katara keeps her gaze trained on the small troupe of people in front of her and wills them to move.

"I'd just like to extend an invitation," he says. "I'm hosting a dinner on behalf of me and my crew as a celebration of our Fire prince's capture. I'll be formally inviting your family, of course, about next week, but I needed to start the whole dinner process somewhere."

For the briefest moment Katara feels a twinge of pity for Hahn. Event organizing in the Southern City is a testing chore. First confirm that most of the upper class is available on a certain day, then make sure you get out the invitations fast enough as to not offend anyone, and of course, organize the actual dinner. Gossip doesn't run as rampant in the South as it seems to in the North, but there are still the wives of lieutenants and generals who have the money and time for it.

"I believe it's better if you see what day all of the others are available on," Katara says, not knowing who the others is. It could be ten people or a thousand. "Then I'll ask my father about his schedule and see where we can fit in."

Hahn nods. "Of course." With relief, Katara makes out Raina moving towards them with a bag in hand.

"It was a pleasure, Hahn," Katara says as cordially as possible, tilting her head slightly in the direction of Raina's approaching figure. Hahn's gaze flits to Raina and bows the best as he can with so many people surrounding them.

"I'll see you in a week or two, then," he says.

As soon as she's within hearing range Raina asks, "What was that about?", looking pointedly at Hahn's retreating form.

"Dinner," Katara says. "I'm guessing in about two or three weeks."

"Probably," Raina agrees. "My mother heard that Hahn's parents are coming for a visit from the North in a week and a half. He'll want to wait until then."

"And your father's fleet is returning next week," Katara adds, and then she sighs."I was hoping the dinner would be small."

"Well, Hahn is a Northerner at heart," Raina says. "Not even an oath of loyalty to the South can change that."

Katara thinks of all of the talk and fabrics and preparation that will go into this and can't suppress a second sigh. "You'll help me pick out clothes, right? I don't have time for this kind of thing."

Raina smiles and Katara realizes she has made a mistake.

"But you'll have to wear exactly what I say."

-O-

Katara pushes back her chair and walks across her room over to her nightstand. She absentmindedly dips her ink-stained hand into the bowl of water resting on the honey-colored wood. An import from the Earth lands. The use of wood had been absorbed into the Water culture so long ago that no one alive remembers a time without it, just like no one remembers a time without Fire spices and Earth vegetables.

The ink dissolves into the water, leaving streaks of black and tinting it gray, and Katara draws her hand out and flicks her fingers to half-bend and half shake off the excess water. She'd keep the bowl of water with her on her desk, considering how many times she ends up having to use it, but one temper flare and a stack of soiled papers taught her better.

She slips back into her chair and stares at the list of words she's made whose meanings she doesn't know, and keeps the original document to the side so she can keep glancing back at it. She uselessly keeps reading over the words in the form on a letter, from one of Fire Lord Sozin's commanding officers. Katara gets the gist of it: a compilation of witness reports of a "strange" someone, but the part that caught her eye was the mention of the Water Tribes.

These reports for the purpose of information records give her the most trouble; their language painfully formal, even for the Fire dialect, and too careful and removed to get any feel for tone or context. 

Making a frustrated sound, Katara pulls out her reference papers from a drawer built into the left side of her desk. She spares another glance at her work-in-progress and decides that the fully-translated history of the Fire Nation collapse will probably help her the most.

Katara unfurls the scroll and her eyebrows further crease as she clears off more space on her desk to open up the scroll enough. She'd been meaning to go to one of the city printshops to have the scroll inked as a hard-leather book. But between her father's watchful eye and the rumors of Katara's military incompetence that are sure to spread if she's seen wasting time on Fire papers, she can't find a safe way to do so.

She scans past the introduction on the parchment. How the world was in peace until Fire Lord Sozin took power, and how the Avatar helped maintain that peace. Then come the details of the Fire Nation's expansion lead by Sozin, and right after that, information on Sozin's raid on the Air Nomads behind Avatar Roku's back. Katara skims past the section detailing Roku's trial of Sozin before the Fire Nation court, the back-and-forth arguments that ruled each time in Sozin's favor, and the fight in the middle of Caldera's volcano that lead to the death of first Sozin and the fume-induced illness that took Roku's life only a few days later. The outbreak of war, the chaos in the Fire Nation, left without a ruler, and the military coup in the Earth Kingdom that shook the government and let Long Feng's family rise to power.

The Water Tribes were the only stable, united forces, and the war was an easy win. Katara's direct ancestors held birthright to the position of chief in the Southern Water Tribe and that transferred during the formation of the new Southern City. They are a celebrated bloodline of military genius.

Katara finds the part of the scroll focused solely on the Water Tribes' role. She lines up her work-in-progress with the history scroll, looking for the unfamiliar words.

_Majo, sosaru, giniro, quori._

She almost immediately finds that giniro means silver after going through a description of the Water Tribes' weaponry. Her frown deepens. She has forgotten more words than she thought she had. While giniro still held some semblance of familiarity to Katara, she doesn't recognize the other words in the slightest, and they don't appear anywhere in the Water Tribes' section. Katara eventually trails her way into the part about the Earth Kingdom in her search.

Just as she's finishing a paragraph on Long Feng's family, a knock sounds on her door and she nearly jumps in her seat.

"One minute!" she calls, and scrambles to roll the scroll closed and shove the various documents littering her table into drawers, lest it's her father. Katara walks quickly to her door and swings it open, and finds with relief that it is a guard.

"Your father is calling for you," he says. "He said he'd like to meet with you in his study before the departure of Major Sokka."

"I'll go down in a moment. Thank you."

Katara presses a lid onto her pot of ink and heads out the door.

Her mind is still on her translations but her feet automatically take her to her father's study, and when she gets there, she finds Asoka already in a chair across from Hakoda; both of their heads bent in conversation. Katara lingers by the doorframe for a moment and when they don't notice her, knocks lightly on it. Both her brother and father's heads tilt up and she takes the seat next to Sokka.

Katara almost asks is anything wrong, but at the last moment changes her question to, "What's wrong?"

"Chief Arnook doesn't want to let too many people know as to not cause a big ruckus right away, but King Long Feng has almost blatantly refused to abide by the disarmament terms," Hakoda says.

"How?"

"Arnook was able to get the first of the amendments to the disarmament terms to the Earth lands sooner than expected by messenger hawk," Sokka answers. "It seems like Long Feng took one look at them and laughed."

"Which ones?"

"Reducing the number of blacksmiths and silversmiths licensed to produce weapons."

"That wouldn't have helped anyway," Katara scoffs. "The illegal market is huge-"

Sokka waves her doubt away. "We know that it wouldn't be very helpful already. Arnook was only testing the waters. If Long Feng didn't agree to this, there's no way in hell he'll agree to the stricter amendments."

Katara looks from her brother to her father. "Is there any other plan from the North now?"

"None that we know of, and I doubt it anyway. The letter that we received about an hour ago said that Long Feng had sent his refusal yesterday. Arnook is probably holding meetings with his top officers."

"Force shutdown of weapon production seems like the only real solution," Katara says. Who knows how many sophisticated weapons have already been produced to get to the point where mere rebels have their hands on them?

Sokka shakes his heads slightly. "That's the ideal solution, but the balance, Katara."

She sighs. "I know, I know."

They are toeing a precarious line here on two fronts: one with the Earth King and the other with the Northern City. Though the two cities of the Water Empire coexist in relative peace and share the same element, many of their beliefs and policies are wildly different even after a century, and for the Southern City to pull a drastic move could lead to the cities working against each other. The Southern City's population stands at a third of the North's and Hakoda's control of overseas lands at a tenth.

With the Earth King, of course, is the issue of him seeming ready to start another war at the slightest turn.

"Has the prince given up anything useful?" Katara asks.

They are running in circles. Information is needed from the prince for the crackdown on nobility, the crackdown is needed to trace weapon distribution, weapons need to be seized; and at the same time they can't provoke the Earth and Fire people.

"Not particularly, but we're getting there. He's given a few names we already knew. It's a start. Remember how long the Northern City took with the Fire princess?" Sokka replies.

Katara nods. "Of course. And all they got for their trouble was a wild goose chase."

"The princess was too sharp for fifteen. They misjudged her and they underestimated her intelligence. The prince is older and the stakes are higher. We're using different tactics this time. We can't afford to push our soldiers around into different places like the North could." Sokka pushes back in his chair. "I should get going. We're leaving for the Fire colonies in an hour, minus Aritak. He can help with handling things while I'm gone. I'll try to cut the trip as short so I can be here for as much of the interrogations and negotiations as possible."

"Good," Hakoda says, and then turns to Katara. "You may get back to your training or wherever else you need to be."

Katara thinks of her trip to the interrogation cells and the prince's too-quick reply. "One last thing; I think it's better if none of the officers besides Aritak know about this yet."

"That's what I was thinking. I'm hoping Arnook's diplomats are able to handle this, or else I might have to pay a visit to Long Feng myself."

Sokka stands up at that and Katara mirrors him. "Aikana's probably on her way to the training chamber. I'll be there if you need anything."

"And I'll be in my study," Sokka says. Hakoda nods wearily and they both leave.

-O-

" _Majo_. What does it mean?"

"You've decided to drop by in normal clothes today." The prince is shackled up this time and his pale skin is mottled with bruises of varying degrees and yet he is acting like Katara has struck up a conversation in the market.

Katara spares the briefest of glances down at her clothes. She still hasn't changed since her trip to the market in the morning, and she's wearing one of her nicer tunics, with embroidery and silk borders.

The prince seems to be able to read her thought process because then he says, "You know, I've seen children in the Fire colonies wear themselves to the bone and earn half of that pretty shirt of yours."

Katara clenches her teeth. "Tell me what it means."

"Kids almost die and get ten copper pieces-"

"You know what I meant."

The prince coughs once and then opens his mouth as if to speak, but then lets out another cough and soon he falls into a hacking fit. The noise makes Katara cringe internally but she keeps a neutral expression and watches patiently from the other side of the bars.

"If you really want to know, you could torture me for it. Use that bending of yours and beat me up," the prince gets out lowly once he can speak again. He tilts his head towards the pot of water in the corner behind Katara. "It might work."

"Maybe I'll revert back to my previous offer of freezing you." Into oblivion.

Katara starts to feel anger for herself instead of the prince. Why did she think coming a second time was a good idea? She's obviously not getting any information and although she doesn't think anyone notable saw her, since it is the middle of the night, the guards also have a habit of talking about things they shouldn't.

"But then your father would wonder who froze his prisoner in the dead of night, wouldn't he?"

"We have plenty of waterbenders; not just me." Katara feels the raw edges of anger flare up in her and she bends the water from her waterskin into her hands; ready to strike.

The prince eyes the water calmly. "Maybe we can strike a deal."

"I am not bargaining with you. Besides, your bloodline is known for betrayal," Katara says. She scowls. "Your only redeeming quality is the blood of Avatar Roku that runs in you."

"Who ironically turned out to be a traitor himself in the end."

"After Sozin betrayed him. Avatar Roku was doing what he had to to restore balance."

"And how is your empire keeping balance? By taking over the Earth and Fire lands until everything is Water?"

Katara narrows her eyes and the water in her hands tenses. "We've opened trading and spread technology and education to everyone. We let the Earth people keep their own government and all bending except for lightening is allowed; everywhere. I'd say we've done a pretty good job, considering what your ancestors had in mind for the world."

"You treat my people like savages," the prince hisses. "You enslave us, kill us-"

"I can assure you there were only three Fire colony deaths in the past year because of our soldiers' actions and we do not have a single slave in this palace, in the rich's homes, or anywhere else-"

"Then explain why I saw kids from the Fire colonies scrubbing the floors of the Earth people, looking dirty and sick," the prince says lowly. "Explain why I've seen firebenders die at the hands of earthbenders just because of their element."

Katara's next words lack steam and it suddenly hits her again that she shouldn't be arguing with a Fire prisoner at this hour of the night. "We do not condone any of that."

"But you don't stop it either."

The water finds its way back into Katara's waterskin.

"One word for a bit of information. It doesn't have to be too important. Anything will do."

"Your words are not worth that much to me."

" _Anatagi kora ni aqui_ ," the prince says. Katara can't help but admire the grace of the words rolling off his tongue. They sound at home in his accent. _Then you wouldn't be here._

" _Watashe sali nogoso_ ," Katara replies easily.

As she walks out, Katara hates how she considers the deal for just a second.


	4. start

_standing like a stick_

_this tie could invert to be a noose instead_

_~bloody shirt by to kill a king_

* * *

Zuko wakes up with a stiff neck, sore back, and mottled bruises covering his flesh that ache down to the bone if touched. His fingers immediately go to the hem of the black tunic they'd put him in on arrival in the interrogation cell. He runs his finger along the fabric, looking for the slightest bit of give, and tugs on an area with looser threads to make a tear. There are five little rips in his tunic in total.

Five days since he's been in the interrogation cell, plus the one day he was in a holding cell. Six days in the Southern City so far.

Six days and he still hasn't heard from any of the moles the Earth nobility has in the Water palace.

For the hundredth time it crosses his mind that maybe the Earth nobles are playing him. Maybe they just decided they'd had enough of Zuko and gotten rid of him. Maybe Azula's played him somehow, like their father had told her to, and even though they're siblings and the only family they've had for the past five years, he'd never put it past her.

The Earth people have never liked the Fire people, made clear by the underground enslavement of Fire people and the crimes against firebenders. They do have reason, Zuko supposes, since his ancestors had tried to take over the Earth Kingdom and had made plans to obliterate earthbenders. There's no reason for the Earth people to like Zuko, except as a means to further their own goals.

But then the rational part of him tells him that the Earth nobles need him and Azula's sitting in a Northern prison so stop being an idiot, Zuko.

He is reluctant to leave the corner of the cell he'd been sleeping in. It's warmed slightly by his own body heat while the rest of the cell is at a temperature near the freezing point. Though the cell's temperature had been bearable in the first two days Zuko had been here, they'd been turning it down gradually ever since; a part of trying to get him to talk.

He holds out his palm and tries to conjure a flame and finds that he can't. Zuko takes a deep breath and taps into his core to raise his body temperature but he still finds himself chilled. He scowls. The bending suppressants they must've slipped into his food are in full effect.

The sound of the door opening cuts through the air. Zuko only lifts his eyes -not wanting to crane his sore neck until necessary- and makes out a group of three people stepping into the cell. All except one hang back close to the door. In a few moments, a pair of footsteps treads across the room and stops only a few inches away from the cell's bars. Zuko rolls his neck once and brings up his gaze to meet the blue eyes of the man on the other side.

"The prince is awake," he says loudly.

Zuko recognizes him as Colonel... Arak? Iritak? He's been overseeing the interrogations for the past few days in place of Major Sokka. His role is mostly useless, Zuko thinks, since all he really does is hold a sealskin notebook that's supposed to be for notes and tap his pen on it. There's not much to oversee.

Zuko's eyes dart to the other two men behind the colonel. The taller one he recognizes from the the list of names and faces the Earth nobles had him memorize. He's a private, Zuko remembers, but his name doesn't come.

"Should I continue then, Colonel Aritak?" the last man says. Zuko is guessing he's today's waterbender.

Colonel Aritak looks back and nods curtly. The private pulls out a key and unlocks the cell's door and gestures towards the waterbender, and immediately, the water in the pot outside of Zuko's cell rises and the waterbender manipulates it so that it hovers in a ring around Zuko.

"Stand up, please," the private says pleasantly, like he's asked Zuko to pass the cookies at tea. Zuko's eyebrow creases slightly as he skims the man's features, his name on the tip of his tongue.

Urago.

Zuko stands leisurely but without protest; his shackles clinking as he gets up. He has no interest in prolonging these useless questionings, and the sooner they knock him out and get it over with, the more time he has to think and rest.

The ring of water hovering around Zuko tightens. If he moves the slightest bit he will cut through it. Or rather, the water will cut through him at the rate that it's spinning. Urago mumbles something to the waterbender and the ring of water loosens its form and falls to the ground. Zuko stands motionless as the water climbs up his feet and up to his neck in a strange sort of bodysuit.

Then the waterbender curls his fingers and the water freezes. Zuko inhales sharply through his nose. He tries to push out his right arm, but even though the ice is at most four inches thick, it is solid and he remains trapped in place.

"I have to say, this is a better effort than last time," Zuko remarks.

Urago walks into the cell silently and paces a semi-circle in front of Zuko.

"We both know you won't slip up and accidentally give us what we need," Urago says finally. "So I'll skip the psychological tricks and games." Zuko smirks and the older man's eyes narrow. "I'll ask a straight-forward question: who are the Earth nobles who hid you and your sister?"

A moment of silence.

"You should know I won't give the answer in this straight-forward way either."

With a nod from Urago the waterbender spreads his curled fingers and Zuko feels ice prick him in the back in a dozen different spots. He barely flinches and continues to stare ahead at the private.

"Who were they, firebender?"

"I said this to each of the interrogators that were sent in. I won't say anything. You can give up," Zuko says. He clenches his teeth as the ice digs further into his skin. His instincts are screaming at him to arch his back but he can't and he feels blood beading on his skin.

"One name, prince, and I can stop all of this."

Zuko hisses as the ice at both of his sides slides slightly forward and starts to compress his rib cage, leaving a trail of what feel like shallow cuts.

"Answer me," Urago demands, eye flashing. Zuko feels like the ice is setting a chill down deep into his bone marrow. He is sure he will never feel warmth again.

Zuko grits his teeth and breathes out a curse as the ice creeps beneath his feet and starts pressing up into his soles. He can't even so much as curl his toes.

"Just... knock me out." He inhales sharply before continuing, his voice strained. "You won't be getting any information."

Urago shoots a terse nod at the waterbender and the layer of ice on Zuko's back parts in sharp daggers and drags horizontally all across his skin. The fabric of the tunic rips and shreds of black fall away. Blood trickles down his flesh. The ice cuts sharply across again and again and when Zuko blinks a cacophony of colors litters his eyelids with the bursts of pain.

"Just one name," Urago repeats.

When he is met by silence ice slashes Zuko's side and his whole body feels like it's on fire. Urago says it again and Zuko manages a, "Fuck you", in response.

His vision starts to blur and he can barely make out what the private is saying. Urago's face seems contorted as he barks out something at Zuko and then turns to the waterbender. "Losing... blood, leave him."

Zuko tries to focus on the waterbender's moving lips but his head starts to spin. He vaguely registers that he's being lowered to the ground, the ice melting around him - and instead of trapping him - the water now almost cradling him as he lies down in a heap. His face is to the metal floor and he thinks he tastes his own blood on the cold surface.

"That's enough," he hears the colonel say, but the sounds comes to him blurry, like his ears are stuffed with cloth. Several pairs of footsteps travel across the floor but he can't keep up with who's going where.

There's a voice in his ear saying, "Pathetic," and a small piece of what seems like paper is pushed into his palm. Then the person is going towards the door and Zuko turns his head enough to catch a blurry outline of whichever one of the three men it was.

Zuko focuses o


	5. speed

_wait, it's just about to break_

_it's not going away_

_-war of change by thousand foot krutch_

-O-

"You _embarrassed_ us," Hakoda hisses. "It was a simple _toast_."

Katara sneaks a quick glance to her right towards her brother, and sees that he is slumped in his chair and looking like a chastised child. She guesses that she looks about the same.

"I would expect my children to be more careful in these kinds of situations," their father continues, his voice needle-like. Sokka sits up a bit straighter and takes a breath as if to speak, but Hakoda cuts him off. "I'm leaving for the Earth lands in less than three weeks, and leaving you in charge! You, who when the city last saw, couldn't even form coherent sentences in front of two thousand of the most important people of the city!"

Sokka's lips thin and he slouches back down. Their father sits down in his desk chair with a sigh with hands resting on his temples.

Katara waits a few minutes before deciding it's safe to talk. "To be fair, Dad, everyone had had a few drinks by then," she says quietly.

His head snaps up. "Hahn hadn't. Neither did I nor the generals and admirals, and there is only one person out of all those who outranks you two."

"I'll find a way to smooth it over," Sokka says in a tight voice.

"Everyone already knows Sokka as the goofy sort of major," Katara adds gently. "He can play it off easily with a few jokes if it ever comes up."

"It's not Sokka I'm too worried about, Katara." Hakoda shakes his head, his lips curling in a half-frown. "It's you. What if you hadn't directed attention away from yourself like you did?"

He pierces Katara with frosted eyes, exuding anger, and Katara ducks her head slightly.

"There would be talk."

"The daughter of the Chief, almost eighteen, and still a blundering little girl, who neither serves nor marries."

Katara lifts up her head. "Dad, we agreed that-"

"I know, Katara!" She almost flinches at her father's rising voice. "But everyone else does not! We have an image to uphold, and especially with the Earth unrest, we can't risk having our own people losing faith in their ruling family!"

Nothing that Katara can think to say -we'll be careful, I won't make the same mistake, we'll watch ourselves from now on - seems like a good counter to her father's anger so she sits, waiting for her father to dismiss them. Sokka shifts in his chair and with a wave of Hakoda's hand, they leave.

"He's just stressed," Sokka says, his voice soothing. Katara looks away.

"I know."

-O-

Zuko sits with his back pressed against the metal wall of his cell. A plastic bowl, half empty of gruel, lies carelessly strewn in front of him. He'd forced himself to eat until the pain in his arm became too distracting to continue.

He takes the hem of his tunic in his hands and rips off a length of cloth, not caring by now that his makeshift calendar is being destroyed. He's long lost count of the days. Zuko gently prods the long gash on his left arm, stretching from his shoulder to just past his elbow, and then holds his breath while he wraps his upper arm where the ice cut the deepest. When the strip is secure he exhales slowly and he can see his breath puffing out in front of him.

They're getting frustrated.

Each day his cell grows colder and his little interrogation team's visits longer. They cut and bruise him more recklessly each time and he savors the hard glint in the Water officers' eyes after they leave fruitless. The word execute starts to float around but they know and Zuko knows that they won't kill him yet, and besides, he can hope that whoever handed him the rice paper can pull some strings in the palace.

Although it's impossible to visually tell apart night and day, Zuko can feel the sun giving away to the moon by the hair-thin tether that he still has to its movements. Usually, he'd start on the few exercises he can manage in his space (he hears Uncle Iroh, laughing, saying, if you ever find yourself in prison, nephew, make sure to keep up your strength, I can tell you that from experience) but today he feels particularly drowsy, and realizes a bit too late that the slight headiness in his muscles is suspiciously familiar to the effects of sleep syrup.

He wakes with a kink in his neck, still propped up against the wall, and when he blinks the remnants of tiredness from his eyes he sees another square of paper in front of him. The sun's rays are tickling his veins now; feather light.

They're considering solitary confinement, it reads. Give up some traces. You need to stay in this cell.

Zuko frowns at the slanted Fire characters and their slightly flourished finishes and their lack of a signature or any indication towards a name. He's managed to narrow down the list of people who could be his mole, from nearly the whole Southern City to almost a dozen people, sure, but this is a dangerous game to play. He needs proof. A conversation, a name, a face.

Even though he doesn't know exactly how long he's been down here now, he'd put it at about three weeks. Too long for only two one-sided attempts at communication.

He folds up the note into a neat square until it won't crease any more - just to occupy himself for a few measly minutes - before he puts it in his mouth.

-O-

"We have good news today," Hakoda says. Katara casts a look around the table and sees that the gathered officers don't look any more optimistic at this than they did before the declaration. "Chief Arnook has approved the request for a crackdown on the Earthern nobility. We owe General Irek gratitude for aiding in our cause."

Everyone perks up at the words and a few of the men and women let out cheers. There's the scraping of metal on the floor as people pull their chairs closer and sit up straighter.

"He has generously offered to move on with the crackdown at our discretion, and I have decided, for obvious reasons, that it would be best if we waited until I return from my trip to the Earth lands. Are there any objections?"

As expected, no one raises a hand or their voice.

"I've elected to put together Colonel Aritak, Private Kira, Admiral Hahn, Private Urago, and Lady Katara as a temporary committee to strategize for the crackdown and handle any related meetings and affairs," he continues smoothly, and Katara almost jolts in her seat at the mention of her name. She sees a few people shift in their seats in her periphery. "Are there any objections?"

A half-dozen hands go up and Katara internally winces, knowing exactly what their concern will be.

"Pardon me, Chief Hakoda, but I don't believe that Lady Katara is the best choice to be on the committee," says a woman. Her lieutenant's pin seems to cut a hole through Katara. "A military officer who has previously been stationed in the Earth lands would be a better fit. Motion to remove Lady Katara from the committee."

"I second the motion," someone says to Katara's right, almost immediately. Katara forces herself not to duck her head and hopes that her cheeks aren't burning.

"Agreed," comes a chorus of voices, and it's a struggle to find anyone who hasn't spoken against her. Her face starts to warm. Is this some sort of punishment?

Her father looks like he expected the reaction and maintains his calm countenance. Katara tries to catch his eye but his gaze deliberately stays away from hers.

"I completely understand the concern, officers. However, I must remind you that Lady Katara has helped with developing strategies for everything from tax control to positioning of troops in the colonies. She has worked closely with myself ever since she was old enough. I acknowledge that she is completely lacking in military experience but I ask that she is given a chance to prove herself."

A few murmurs start up and more than a few glances are thrown Katara's way. Sokka shoots her a reassuring look from across the table, as does Aritak, and she can see in their expressions that they have been caught just as off-guard about this as she has. Discussion starts in earnest and Hakoda looks on blankly, still not meeting Katara's gaze.

Finally, someone speaks up, "Motion to keep Lady Katara on the committee, contingent on an officer of rank lieutenant or higher with experience with Earth politics and territory joining."

This starts another torrent of dicussion, voices echoing against the walls, and somewhere in the volley of words Katara hears, "I second the motion."

A few moments later, "Agreed," and then another, "Agreed," and slowly another until the minimum eight is reached to pass the proposition.

"Motion to have General Torok to join the committee." Since the contingency was announced there seemed to be an unspoken agreement that General Torok would be the best addition, and the motion is quickly passed.

Hakoda smiles. "It looks like we have our committee then. General Torok, Admiral Hahn, Colonel Aritak, Private Kira, Private Urago, and Lady Katara." A second later they move on. "Since this will be our last meeting before I leave, why don't have a full run through?"

The usual matters of finances and the placement of platoons and battalions are plowed through, but Katara hardly listens to any of it. This, her being on the committee, is going to eat away at her time. There will be drafts and maps and discussions and meetings and she is on a far too tight schedule between the general meetings she's had to attend with her father and the slow takeover of his work as he prepares to leave. She's already on track to miss two lessons from Aikana this week.

Katara looks up at her father and narrows her eyes.

Eventually, Katara's committee is dismissed to the War Council room, ideal because of the maps and resources stored there, and it is silent as they trudge up to the space. She catches several glances from General Torok and Hahn directed towards her. She doesn't even look the part of a member, with her casual tunic and trousers, while everyone else is dressed in military garb.

"We already have a list of nobles suspected to be involved in the distribution of illegal weapons," General Torok says, paging through a folder of documents as the others settle down into chairs. Aritak pulls out a map of Ba Sing Se, where most of the rich and upper-middle class live.

General Torok glances up to see Aritak laying the map on the table, and says, "Off the the top of my head, I know that the Bei Fong family is involved too, and they live in Gaoling. Not everyone's in Ba Sing Se," he says, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the map, his eyes still on the folder in his hands. "There's some nobles hiding in villages now. Might as well take out a map of all of the Earth lands too."

Katara stands up quickly and fetches the other map.

"The captured prince hasn't given us any leads yet, so him being a useful source is out," Aritak says once everyone is seated again.

Hahn looks up from marking up the map of Ba Sing Se. "Not to be rude, Colonel, but perhaps if I lead the interrogations for a bit, the change of tactics could pry something out of the prince," he says breezily.

Aritak leans forward, his eyes darkening. "Are you saying that the methods in place are ineffective?"

"Of course not. I just thought that a temporary break in tactics could help."

"Then you'll have to take that up with Major Sokka. I'm carrying out the orders that he's been giving me," Aritak says lowly. "Besides, our next move is to put the prince in solitary confinement. Hopefully that will speed things up."

"That was one of my thoughts as well. Pardon me, I shouldn't have said anything. I'll talk to Major Sokka if it comes to it." He turns to Katara.

"And Lady Katara? Is there anything you've found in the Fire documents?"

There is a hint of maliciousness to his voice that Katara thinks she might be imagining. She curls the fingers of her left hand into a fist under the table. Hahn knows completely well what the situation with the documents is.

"Not as of yet."

"It's been, what, almost a year?"

"It takes a long time to piece together translations. And there is no one else who is well-versed enough in the old dialect to help."

"Except for the Fire prince."

"He hasn't proved to be very helpful during interrogations. I might try getting help from him, but it seems like a waste of time."

"It wouldn't hurt to spend a few minutes trying."

"I have other responsibilities, between my training and my father's departure being in less than a week. I'll see."

"Fair enough," Hahn says, relaxing into his chair. Someone passes Katara a marker and the only sound is of felt squeaking against paper and General Torok giving names and locations as they get to work annotating the maps.

When the meeting is over, Katara is anxious to get downstairs to the training chambers.

"Everything's getting crazier by the day, huh?"

Katara throws every bit of concentration that she has into hurling ice daggers at a section of panelling.

"You'll be fine, Katara, even if you do end up missing a lesson here and there," Aikana says gently, eyes tracing the path of the daggers. "You're well on the way to mastery, if that helps take a bit of the load off of you."

Katara sighs. "Thank you, Aikana. It's just these next few weeks that have me worried."

She nods and gives a small smile. "It'll get better once these Earth issues settle down. And don't worry about the week without your father. All of the generals and admirals pull their own weight and you'll have your brother with you."

They spar for a bit after Aikana leads her through some new forms.

Katara loses.

The days leading up to Hakoda's departure are filled to the brim with papers and swords and waterbending and when the morning he leaves comes Katara feels like she's only blinked.

He's scheduled to leave with a small Earth ground unit of both waterbenders and nonbenders, lead by a lieutenant named Lina, one of Aikana's past protégés.

"I'm sorry for yelling at you," Hakoda says, pulling Katara into his arms. She is reluctant to sink into his grip first but then relaxes, her chin resting on her father's chest. "No matter what I say, I'm still proud of what you've done so far. Make sure your brother doesn't deplete our meat stores."

Katara laughs against his shirt. "I'll send him out to hunt down his own food if I have to. Good luck with Long Feng."

"And good luck to you. I know you two will be fine." When Katara starts to pull away he puts a hand on her shoulder and says, "And Katara, I only gave you the position on the committee because I know you can do well in it. Prove your worth."

Katara nods and takes a few steps back as her father says something to Sokka, and then claps him on the back.

"See you in a week!" she calls, waving as he disappears down towards the palace docks.

-O-

"Give it up, firebender."

Zuko grits his teeth against the hot, stinging heat blooming on his flesh. He never knew ice could burn like this. This new waterbender they've found creates ice so cold it feels like magma is seeping into his skin.

He looks up into the stony face of Private Urago and feels his vision slipping with each passing second. He tastes blood in the back of his throat.

"Kensei," he says finally, heeding the note's warning. He's glad he'd rehearsed this in his head before because he can barely control the words that tumble of his mouth. "The general Kensei and the Alora family are part of it."

He sees the colonel, Aritak, scribble something down on his sealskin book.

"Part of what?" Urago says.

"I gave you the names. Fucking figure it out!"

"Part of what?" and the pain amplifies with the private's rising voice.

Zuko grasps for a word in his pounding head. He won't tell them exactly what they need, what's something they'll believe-

"Weapons. They're involved with weapons."

He gathers the traces of blood in his mouth and spits it all right in the private's face. Zuko gets the satisfaction of seeing it hit the man's chin before he's abruptly dropped to the ground and knocked out.

-O-

"General Torok, are you familiar with the names Kensei and Alora?"

The general looks down briefly at the map in the center of the table before returning his gaze to Aritak. "The Alora family lives in Ba Sing Se, and Kensei's a lieutenant from New Omashu, I believe."

"He's a general now, apparently," Private Urago corrects. "At least, that's what the prince said."

"It doesn't surprise me. He was always unusually ambitious," General Torok says. A slight frown creases his features. "He's always been more on our side than the Earth King's, though. This isn't good. Did the prince say anything else?"

"The prince claims that both are involved in weapons," Urago says, and a nod from Aritak confirms.

Hahn reaches for a paper in front of him and runs his finger down the ink. "That would make sense. We've been looking for someone who has a link in New Omashu. He's in the perfect position to get weapons to soldiers."

"I wouldn't take his word as truth so easily," Private Kira says, her hair falling in front of her face as she too looks down at the map. "He could be misleading us."

"I think it's worth a shot," Urago says. "It's the only lead from the prince so far, no? It should be investigated."

"Our forces are already spread thin in the New Omashu area," Katara says with a frown. "I'm sure you're aware of that, private?"

"I am, my lady. However, I still believe we should take note. We can bring this up with the Chief when he returns."

"I suppose it's worth a look," Katara says, tapping her charcoal pencil on the table. "Should we hold a meeting with all officers?"

"I don't think so. Let's wait until we have something more to tell them."

After they've discussed all that can be discussed, everyone files quietly out of the meeting room, and Katara sees off everyone at the palace's gate as they leave to their homes, something her father or Sokka would usually do. The only one who lingers is Aritak, and they stand in the huge space, breathing in the twilight air.

Katara's grateful for his presence.

"So you've almost survived your first day as co-chief of the Southern City," he says, teasing.

"Almost is the key word. I'm pretty sure the stack of paperwork waiting for me is going to eat me alive when I get back."

"If Sokka doesn't get to you first."

"He's been keeping the chef busy today. I'm pretty sure he's in a good mood, actually."

They keep quiet for a few moments, looking out at the darkening tundra, punctuated by the warm glow of the bobbing lights that the leaving officers carry.

"You should go out to the market tomorrow, or call over Raina," Aritak says gently, breaking the silence. "You seem like you could use a little time off."

"Temporary chiefs don't get breaks. I'm fine, besides."

"How about a training break, tomorrow, then? It's not really a break since you'll be working."

Katara smiles up at him. "That sounds good." Then she straightens up. "You should get going before it's completely dark. Your mom will worry."

Aritak shifts. "I probably should. See you later, then."

"See you."

When Katara clambers up to her room she bypasses the paperwork sitting on her desk and instead picks up a thin stack of weathered parchment. She pulls off her military-style overcoat and takes off the sword strapped to the back of her waist out of formality, more than anything, and changes into more comfortable shoes. She debates with herself for a moments but leaves her waterskin behind.

She checks in briefly on Sokka to find him snoozing on his desk, and shakes her head before moving the papers he'd been working on out of the way to avoid getting drool on them. After she's gently shut the door to his study again she starts to head down into the depths of the palace.

The guards at the mouth of the interrogation cell hall don't look too surprised at her presence and let her through without preamble. She traces her way to the prince's cell and the guard standing in front of the door hands her a lantern. She pushes through the entrance and walks in quietly, setting down the lantern near the cell's bars before sitting down beside it. The room illuminates in a faint glow.

"You're back for another visit." The firebender's eyes seem to pulse.

"So I am," Katara says, and fingers the pages in her hand before pulling out one. She holds it up towards the firebender for a split second. "You're going to help me translate these documents."

He chuckles, the sound broken in his raspy voice.

"I told you the deal I'd make for translations. A piece of information for a piece of information." When Katara's forehead tenses he says, "Are you going to threaten me with your water again? The interrogators have already done a pretty good job of beating me up. I don't know if you can top them."

"I left my waterskin in my room this time."

"There's a pot of water right there," he says, raising an eyebrow and nodding towards the corner of the room.

Katara shrugs.

"Then how are you planning to get what you need out of me?"

_"Imi iru 'quori'?"_

He can't stop himself when he says, "prison," and then scowls. Her accent is almost mother-taught. "That- that wasn't fair."

Katara smirks and the firebender looks like he wants to murder her. "It's a start," she says.

"I'll translate them for you if you let me read what they say."

Katara resists the impulse to roll her eyes. "How stupid do you think I am?"

"Stupid enough to come down here and expect me to start helping you," and Katara is left to wonder how every conversation manages to turn into childish bickering.

She makes a few notes in the margins of her papers about the meaning of qurori and feels the firebender's eyes on her, cutting through her. There's silence for a few minutes and the prince's eyes eventually fall closed, though he doesn't sleep, his arms crossed over his chest. She looks ahead at him supposes she could torture answers out of him, but that hasn't been working well for Private Urago, Aritak, Sokka and whatever waterbender they have with them.

Katara casts a quick glance around the room.

"I'll take you outside," she says finally.

His eyes open. "What?"

"In exchange for translations, I'll take you outside of your cell."

He close his eyes again. "When?"

"Now. But only as far as the hallway right outside this door," Katara says, gesturing towards the entrance to the cell.

There's a few moments of silence.

"How do you know I'll give you the correct translations?"

This is something Katara has thought about, obviously. " I'll just have to assume that not everyone related to Sozin is a lying traitor."

"How gracious of you," the prince says, eyes narrowed. They stare at each for a few minutes, Katara's expressions carefully blank and his contemptuous, but finally he says, "Fine."

Katara gets up from her spot on the floor and turns to exit the room.

"May I have the key to the prince's cell?" she says to the stationed guard.

He immediately looks uncomfortable. "I'm not sure if that's a good-"

"I'll only be bringing him out into this hallway to stretch for a bit. Besides, there's water in the room."

The guard looks like he wants to demur but he hands over the key after a few heartbeats. Katara strides back into the room, foolish excitement rising up in her. She unlocks the cell's door and waits for the prince to make his way out.

He gets up to his feet fluidly and walks the distance of his cell easily enough, but stumbles when he's near the entrance to the room. Katara watches patiently, her eyes on the torn cloth of his back. She can see his arms shaking with effort as he pushes open the door. Katara picks her papers and the lantern and follows behind.

The firebender makes a few rounds of the hallway, walking slowly, and with each step he seems to become steadier. With the glow of the numerous lanterns mounted on the hallway's walls, Katara can now clearly see that what looked like superficial cuts and bruises in the weakly-lit cell are actually angry red gashes and deep purple bruises, peeking out from the firebender's ripped sleeves and shredded back. Some of them look like they're close to infection and Katara has the automatic impulse to heal them, but she supposes Aritak will take care of them before it gets too bad.

Katara turns her attention back to her documents as the prince starts to stretch. She underlines the key words that she'll ask for first, then stars the most important sentences, and if the firebender hasn't turned into a petulant child by the time she's gotten those, she'll confirm the translation of the first three paragraphs. She idly moves her pen and the cell's key from hand to hand, doing a strange sort of juggle with them, and taps her foot.

"Get back in," she says once she's tired of rereading her documents.

She straightens from where she was leaning on the wall and waits for the firebender to bypass her. He retreats back into his cell without dissent and Katara sees the guard become at ease in her periphery. When the firebender brushes past her she suddenly becomes aware that he could easily overtake her if he wanted. He's a full head taller than her and no doubt stronger, disregarding bending.

"Will you-" the guard starts as Katara goes back into the room, but she quickly cuts him off.

"I'll be fine, thank you. I just have a few questions for the prisoner."

She relocks the cell's door and settles onto the floor, her lantern to her left.

"What does _sosaru_ mean?"

"Either 'she overpowered' or 'she floated', depending on the context." Katara is mildly surprised at how readily he gives up the answer. She scribbles she overpowered onto her paper.

_"Majo?"_

"Monster or dark being."

_"Elle mura ni kyoju?"_

_"'She used to reside in the village.'"_ The firebender looks amused. "And you're the one who knows the language the best in the entire Water Empire? I'd expect you to know something that simple."

"It was an irregular verb," Katara says, frowning in concentration.

Her minds races to put together what she's learning. The document is starting to sound more and more like a children's story rather than a letter from a commanding officer to his sovereign. Is it some sort of code?

_"Ryodan?"_

"No translation. It's a term for a small unit of Fire soldiers."

"How many soldiers in one?"

"Ten, usually."

_"Chudano?"_

"Suspended."

"As in?"

"Hanging."

 _She suspended our people,_ becomes the direct translation of one sentence, and the wording gives Katara a slight chill.

"That's all," Katara says, a twinge of anticipation curling in her stomach.

"Glad to be of help," the firebender says, voice dripping with sarcasm. Katara stands and leaves, not sparing a glance backwards.

She hurries to her room. First, she'll rewrite a section of the translation she did earlier, then add the new words to her reference list, she's so close-

"Hey! I was looking for you. Where were you?"

Katara's head snaps to her right, startled, but she relaxes when she sees the familiar form of her brother approaching. She considers lying for a moment but then decides against it, holding up her papers.

"I went down to the interrogation cells for translations."

Sokka looks like he barely heard her, and as he comes closer, Katara sees that he's unusually alert, especially since she'd seen him passed out on his desk not an hour ago.

"Do you think you could finish up some paperwork for me? I left it on my desk in my study. Lieutenant Are's here and I need to go downstairs."

"No problem," Katara says, a bitter taste rising up in her throat. "Why's he here so late, though?"

"A tax collection building was burnt down by a group of Fire rebels."

Katara blanches. "Any casualties? Where?"

"Emerald colony. One of Arnook's majors was killed and two of our soldiers had severe burn injuries. I think a half dozen more are in treatment."

"Emerald's the Northern City's, though. How did our soldiers end up there?" Katara asks, voice getting higher.

Sokka looks grim. "Someone from the North sent an order in the South's name to move a whole unit there a few days ago."

"And the unit blindly followed the instructions?"

"It had the Southern generals' seal on it."

"Who-"

"That's what we're going to discuss," Sokka says, in a tone that indicates the conversation is over. "I'll come up to the study to fill you in afterwards."

Katara forgets about her documents. She makes a beeline for Sokka's study and dumps her papers on the desk, going straight for the bathroom. She turns on the faucet and coats the tips of her fingers in water and presses them to her head, getting the water glowing with the faintest bit of healing to ward off the headache she feels coming.

Her mind flits back to the first time she'd gone into the interrogation cell. She'd thought she was being paranoid before, but-

She pulls out a piece of paper and makes a note to have the guards' rotation for the interrogation cell wing changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i didn't know much about military rankings before writing this story, so i did some research before assigning ranks to characters, but looking back i think i still managed to screw them up a bit so here's how the rankings are (in my crazy head):
> 
> "normal" ground soldiers:
> 
> 1\. general
> 
> 2\. lieutenant
> 
> 3\. colonel
> 
> 4\. major (i know sokka's rank is low looking at this, but his rank is more of a formality anyway, since technically he outranks or out-titles everyone by being the chief's son)
> 
> navy:
> 
> 1\. admiral
> 
> 2\. private
> 
> thanks to everyone for reading! :D


	6. crescendo

_we count the days_

_scratching lines on the wall_

_~i don't want to be here anymore by rise against_

-O-

"Make note of every single person who goes into the prince's cell, and for how long, regardless of rank," Katara says, holding out a notebook, and smiles. "Thank you, Wei."

He takes the notebook from her hands. "No problem, Lady Katara."

"I'm going to drop in during the evening to ask the prisoner some questions, so I'll check around the palace then to see that all of the guards' shift change has gone smoothly."

"I think the most trouble I'm going to get is some grumbling from the newer guards," Wei says, waving her concern away. "Don't worry about it. I'll make sure everyone's in their places."

"Thank you," she says again, "and please, you know you can just call me Katara."

"Maybe in another century or two," he says with a corner of his mouth lifted, and Katara laughs, shaking her head at the older man. His family's been working with the palace ever since it was established, and yet he insists on formalities.

"I'm sorry to be in such a rush, but I should get going now."

"I'll see you around," he replies with a smile, and Katara starts off down the hall, turning back just once to wave at him.

Her stomach rumbles and she heads straight for the kitchen, calling out a good morning across to the chef before swiping a few pastries and an apple for her breakfast.

"Won't you sit and eat?" the chef says, waving a spoon in the direction of a table, and Katara smiles apologetically.

"Sorry, Telen, lots of things to do today."

"Chiefly duties keeping you busy, huh?"

Katara tries to finish both pastries on the way to the War Council room, and in between, she shoves in bites of her apple, and soon her cheeks have puffed up to twice their normal size. She picks up her pace as she passes by a large window, with the sun shining brightly through, and realizes she's running later than she thought she was. Sokka had called an emergency meeting for officers of rank lieutenant and up, which really just meant all the lieutenants, admirals, and generals - with the exception of Aritak, who Sokka sometimes probably trusts more than Katara herself.

Being late will not reflect on her well, and she uses the mental image of Hahn sitting in a chair, looking smug as she arrives late, to serve as motivation to _hurry eat faster walk quicker_.

She arrives just as everyone is settling down in their chairs and she almost sighs in relief. Katara runs her tongue over her teeth once to make sure that there's no red skin stuck in between and brushes off her hands on her tunic as discreetly as possible.

As Sokka starts to give everyone gathered a run down of the recent event, she looks around and gauges everyone's individual reactions, not knowing exactly what she's looking for. Anyone could be a traitor; or then again, it could be that no one is a traitor. Maybe she is being paranoid like she thought at first with the prince.

Still, she searches for any sign of a knowing gleam, a glimmer of pride, and finds none. For a few moments, the room is shocked into silence, and then people turn to each other and start talking until Sokka speaks up again.

"We have a few ideas about how the generals' seal could have ended up in the Northern City, but no solid leads yet," he says. "I have already agreed not to take any drastic measures into investigating Northern nobles; at least for now. We can't afford to damage ties with the Northern City before the Earth crackdown and with all of the rebel activity. We'll go around the table for comments and concerns."

Almost everyone speaks at least once.

"Do we know if they had any weapons?"

"They used firebending, mostly," Sokka says, his expression darkening, "but yes, they did have some Earth military weapons."

"We need to investigate into the Northerners, though, or else how will we ever find out how this happened?"

"We don't know for sure that one of them was at fault."

"That's like what's happening with the Earth issues. We can't be sure it's their fault. We have to cut right into the matter to bring about any change."

"I believe the agreement Major Sokka made was appropriate action. Southern and Northern City ties are already strained, and the North is so much more powerful. Going against their nobility... that would be bad."

And on and on until some equivocal course of action is decided on.

"It looks like we'll have to investigate into the Northern nobility, just not in an outright manner," Sokka interrupts with a tone of finality. "We'll get some ambassadors shipped out there to keep an open ear and ask around. I can't exactly ask Chief Arnook to investigate his own officers, but I'll do my best to get as much more information as possible. If anyone has any ideas or leads, please see me or Lady Katara."

Everyone is dismissed, and most of the officers trudge back to their homes, while some stay within the Western Wing where all of the meeting rooms are, having other committee gatherings or briefings.

Sokka starts to head back up to his study and Katara walks quickly to catch up with him.

"I think it's more likely we have a traitor amongst us," Katara says quietly to him.

He runs a hand over his face. "I don't want to believe it, but... I guess there's a good chance. We have a full drawer of the generals' stamps in the palace, plus the ones that every general carries, versus the one stamp in the whole Northern City, and we don't have many Northerners who've been here lately. I don't think one of them could've stolen one and then taken it back. Arnook himself stores the copy in the North."

Katara nods. "Even though the closet with the stamps here is locked and then the drawer itself is locked, all of the generals and admirals have access to the keys. Even if it wasn't one of the generals, a lesser officer could've gotten their hands on the keys somehow."

Sokka sighs. "I'll sign a paper to invalidate all of the generals' seals and give each general an individualized one, like you said yesterday." He laughs brokenly. "It seems like common sense now, doesn't it?"

Katara smiles weakly. "We've never had circumstances like these before, though. It was never an issue till now."

Her brothers mumbles an agreement. "Did you fill out all of the paperwork I left last night? I have some time if-"

"No, I finished it. I left it in the third drawer in your study."

Something else seems to occur to Sokka. "Can you ask the locksmith to put locks on all of the drawers and cabinets in the War Council room?"

Katara raises an eyebrow. "The room itself already locks, and there's only two copies of the key. One with you and one with me. Why?"

His eyes darken. "If there's a traitor, I don't want to take chances. There's too many important documents in there."

Katara nods. "I'll go to him later, then."

"Thanks."

Katara elbows his side when she sees the stern expression that settles over his face and notices the dark circles that have hollowed his eyes in barely two days. "When Dad gets back everything'll get sorted out. Don't lose too much sleep, okay?"

He exhales slowly and manages a smile. "If you say so, little sis."

Katara goes into her own room and sits at her desk, taking out her pot of ink and pen. She grabs a paper from the fresh pile of draft policies she has to review and calculations she has to do and gets to work. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see her Fire documents laying haphazardly on the far corner of her desk, serving as incentive for her to keep reading and writing and stringing together numbers in her head.

By the time the sun is at its peak in the sky Katara shakes out her aching and cramping wrist and decides it's time for a break. She leaves her room, locking the door behind her, and starts walking down the halls and to the kitchen. When she gets there Telen passes her a helping of stew, hearty and made with meat and a selection of Earth roots, and once she's finished he hands her a covered bowl; more of a pot, really, to take back up to Sokka.

When she drops off the stew with Sokka, he brightens considerably and digs right in. Katara shakes her head and retreats back to her room, but is being lead down the halls not ten minutes later by Aritak towards the training chambers.

"Time for our not-really-a-break-break."

"What do you want to work on?" Katara asks, shrugging out of the overcoat she'd worn for the briefing. She lays it on a bench as Aritak looks around the chamber, eyes taking in the array of weapons they have to choose from.

"How about you use your bending and I'll use dao swords?"

Katara smiles. "I don't think that's a fair match. You'll probably lose."

He shakes his head. "First to be pinned down loses?"

Katara nods. Aritak pulls the swords out of their sheath and Katara pulls the stopper on her waterskin.

"Ladies first."

Katara shapes the water into a thin waterwhip and widens her arms, sending the water arching towards Aritak's feet. He deflects it easily with his swords in a clean swing of silver and he charges forward. Katara coats her fingers with water and flicks them, sending small shards of ice flying towards his face, but in a few more fluid movements the ice shatters before it can hit him or is dodged.

Katara charges forward, gathering the drops of water on the ground and sending them hurling in a mini jet, but Aritak merely holds his swords at an angle and splits the jet. Katara runs around him, bending the water back into her grip and dodging his swings.

"You've gotten better," she says. "It's taking a bit longer to crush you."

"I think you mean that you've just finally stopped deluding yourself and realized my superior skills."

Katara opens her mouth to retort but clamps it shut again when one of Aritak's swords barely misses the ends of hair. They circle each other for a good half an hour, exchanging evenly-matched blows until they're both breathing just a bit harder.

"Give up," Katara says, reforming a waterwhip for the umpteenth time and aiming to knock one of his swords from his hand.

"Do I sense that you're tired, Lady Katara?" he says, neatly sidestepping the waterwhip and dispersing its form with the other sword.

Katara walks in a semi-circle around him, and he stays still for a few moments, watching her, but then suddenly starts to charge forward. She drops to the ground and kicks in a small arc even though Aritak is a good three feet away from her, and the next moment he's stuck in place, looking dumbfounded. Katara rushes forward, not wasting any time, and takes the ice freezing his feet in place and forms it into a dagger and holds it at his throat.

"You waterbent with your feet," he says, his voice almost accusing, and then Katara's momentum and Aritak's imbalance become too much and they careen towards the ground.

Katara lands in a heap on top of him but quickly steadies herself and braces one knee on either side of his chest, holding the ice dagger at his collarbone victoriously. "I won," she declares proudly and too late realizes their too-close proximity.

"Are you going to put that down?" he says, his voice a few notches lower than before and having a hint of something that makes an involuntary shiver run down Katara's spine.

"We should probably get up," she says.

Aritak laughs a little. "We probably should." A lock of inky hair has fallen across his high cheekbones and Katara has the sudden urge to push it back into place. Instead she scrambles to her feet and melts the ice dagger back into her waterskin.

"We don't have any committee meetings today, do we?" she says before she can stop herself, anything to break the sudden hush.

"That's tomorrow," he says.

Katara feels heat on her cheeks. "I have a lot of work to do. I'll get going."

Aritak salutes her. "See you later, chief."

-O-

When Zuko hears light footsteps tread across the cell's floor, he immediately knows who his visitor is. The sun's starting to wane just slightly; it's right before twilight.

"A bit early, today, aren't you?" he says.

Her footsteps pause for just a moment before resuming, and he looks up at the waterbending girl just as she sits on the other side of the bars. She has a lantern with her like last time and she splays a thin pile of papers out on the floor in front of her before taking a pen out of the pack she wears strapped to her hip.

"I found the time now, so I came," she says simply, focusing all of her attention on a single page. Zuko half-closes his eyes, trying to ignore the aching in his left arm. The flesh surrounding the long cut feels hot to the touch and he knows it's teetering on the brink of infection, if it's not already infected. He feels faintly warm despite the biting cold of his cell and the place the heat is emanating from can't be his bending.

He hears his uncle's voice.

_If you're in the Earth lands, nephew, find calendula and lavender and crush them together, and if you're in the Fire colonies, find elderberry and plantain leaves._

_Fire Nation_ , Zuko had corrected, and Uncle had said to him that there will never be a Fire Nation again.

He studies the waterbending girl in front of him. "Are you just going to sit there or are you going to ask questions again?" he asks.

She looks up; irritated. "In a few minutes."

"Couldn't you have done whatever you're doing before?" The noise that the pen is making on the parchment is grating on his nerves like nails on a chalkboard.

"I'm sorry," she says, blue eyes meeting his, "I didn't realize you were on such a tight schedule."

He clenches his teeth and tries to amplify the noise in his head so he doesn't have to hear the steady scratch scratch as she inks in words on her paper. His paper, really. He doesn't recognize the documents the girl's chosen to try and translate but he recognizes the color and shape of the parchment she holds that was used in nearly all of the Royal Library. Zuko had been there only once, when his mother was still alive and he still travelled with his father and Azula, to retrieve some book or another that Ozai had insisted they needed.

They never found it. The library had collapsed on itself and was left dilapidated, like much of Caldera City. Zuko wonders how the Water Empire managed to retrieve anything.

" _Chishio_?"

"What?"

"What does it mean?" the girl asks.

The answer is at the tip of Zuko's tongue but then he remembers, "Didn't we have a deal?"

"Oh. Right. Out into the hallway we go, then," she says, starting to stand up.

"I'll give you the translations if you get me lavender and calendula or plantain leaves."

"For the infection?" Her eyes trace the outline of his arm and Zuko guesses she's a healer by the way she immediately recognizes the herbs' use. "I don't think so."

"Why?" A bitter edge creeps into his voice. "Do you make a habit of leaving prisoners with infections?"

Her eyes narrow. "It's not my place."

"You're the chief's daughter, aren't you? Then whose place is it?"

"Your interrogators'," she says, succinct.

Zuko tries not to grimace as he stands up shakily. "To the hallway, then." When he passes by the girl and goes into the hallway, completely illuminated, he sees the slight hesitation in her expression as her gaze jumps across the various cuts and bruises on his body.

Zuko's limbs feel heavy with fever as he paces back and forth through the hallway, the most physical activity he can get in the limited space. Still, it wakes him a bit; breathes fresh air into his clouded mind.

When they're back inside the cell the waterbender repeats her question from before.

"Blood."

"I thought that was _sangre_."

" _Chishio_ is the formal word."

" _Soneru_?"

That gives him pause. "Manipulate, I think."

The waterbender inhales sharply.

"What?"

"I think I just- I'm leaving." She sounds dizzy, even slightly sick, Zuko thinks.

He watches her exit in silence.

-O-

Katara grips the paper in her hands tightly and heads for a small storage closet on the second floor of the palace. Her insides twisting, she fishes the key to the door out of her pack and turns it in the lock shakily.

_She suspended our people in air._

_The attacks always happened near the full moon._

_We believe she could manipulate blood._

Some of the Southern City's units had found a small tribe of waterbenders in the Earth lands a few years ago who could manipulate the water inside plants. The waterbending units in stationed in the murkier Earth towns and villages were taught the technique, and now every military waterbender knows how to bend vines and plants, but this, taking control of someone's _blood_ -

"Impossible," Katara murmurs to herself, running her fingers over the wooden shelves that contain all the salvaged documents. How do you direct someone's blood flow without rupturing their veins; their organs? How does it feel to have your own blood working against you?

It's wrong.

She continues to skim through the shelves until she finds a familiar hard-covered book with a thin spine. She wriggles it out of its place and turns it over in her hands, tracing the lock on the front cover. She has taken the book to every locksmith in the Southern City and has gotten everyone from her father to Raina to try and pry it open but nothing has worked.

"No key fits into it, Lady Katara," she'd been told. "There's none of the usual lock mechanisms."

She tucks into her arm and turns back around to leave the room, locking the door behind her and tossing the key into her pack. Maybe the firebender will recognize the lock's style.

The night ends with more paperwork and more than a few times she catches herself accidentally writing blood or moon onto the official documents. What would drive a person to seek that kind of power over someone? Curiosity?

No, she thinks, once she's double-checked the date on the letter. It was written in one of the high points of the Hundred Year War, around the time waterbenders were starting to be persecuted. Desperation.

"The Water Empire is thriving," she mumbles.

By the end of the night, she decides that no one else needs to know about her discovery.

She dreams of witch-like hands curling and uncurling, blood responding to their movements like water.

-O-

"Maybe you should send down a healer to check on the firebender," Katara says, looking across the table at Sokka. She stirs her spoon idly in the cup of tea in front of her. It's a hibiscus blend and the color is a deep pinkish red. She can't bring herself to drink it.

Sokka looks a bit more peppy than the day before and he eats his breakfast with renewed fervor. "Private Urago suggested we keep him a bit feverish to fog up his mind a bit. He might give up information more easily that way. Why?"

Katara pushes away her tea and reaches for a slice of bread. "Some of his cuts looked infected. I don't think we want to have to amputate one of his arms either."

"I'll give Aritak a bit of salve then to take down with the next interrogation," he says through a mouthful of eggs. Katara makes a face at him.

"Don't speak with your mouth full."

"I'm sorry, Lady Katara," he says, punctuating her name with a particularly obnoxious chewing sound.

Katara waits until her bite of toast has slipped down her throat. "Any new leads on the tax building?"

Sokka shakes his head. "We've gotten a few detectives in the North now. I'm hoping we'll hear back from them today. Whoever did it covered up their tracks really well."

"How are the injured soldiers?"

"All of them recovered, thank La."

"When are we making the announcement?"

"This afternoon. It'll be an open session in the community meeting hall."

Katara brushes stray crumbs off her lap. "Good. This isn't the kind of thing that'll go down well with a messenger and a piece of paper."

"I don't think it'll go down too well this way either," he replies, and that quiets Katara. She nibbles on the rest of her toast and then puts it down, feeling slightly sick.

"I'm going to go. I have a committee meeting in ten minutes."

Sokka deflates slightly. "Yeah, I have a meeting with General Norr in an hour. I'll get in some paperwork before then."

Katara pushes back her chair and leaves Sokka's study, heading towards the War Council room.

"Hey, did you know about the locks on all the cabinets?" Aritak says to her as soon as she enters. Everyone else is sitting at the table, looking bored.

"Yeah, Sokka ordered it. He said we can't take any chances," she says, and when her gaze meets his she suddenly remembers yesterday's training. Aritak raises an eyebrow and she realizes she's probably been looking at him for too long and quickly looks away, walking over to one of the cabinets.

She slips one of the keys that Sokka had handed her right before breakfast into the keyhole and fetches the file full of maps and things they'd been using. She hands it off to General Torok.

"No new leads in the latest Fire rebel incident," Katara says once everyone's seated. "We've managed to get a few of our people into the North so we might be hearing back later on. Hopefully we'll get some more names."

"I've been looking back through some of our reports," General Torok says, "and it seems that the underground operations might be centered in Gaoling with the Bei Fong family, not in Ba Sing Se as we thought before."

"The Bei Fongs aren't exactly the highest up in noble circles," Private Urago says. "Perhaps you're mistaken, General? It just seems unlikely."

"I think that's what would make it ideal. There's so high up as to immediately draw attention, they live in a fairly remote village, they still have the necessary wealth and connections. The reasoning is there," Hahn says.

"I agree with the Admiral," Private Kira says. "Let's mark it down as a possibility. We can through the reports from our mission to retrieve the prince once more to see if there's any other evidence."

Urago still looks unconvinced but says, "That sounds fair."

The rest of the meeting is the same as the previous ones: making lists of which families are associated with what, assigning risk numbers to each family, ordering them by importance, marking key areas on the maps.

When it's done Katara hurries to the kitchen, inhaling half of a sandwich before scurrying to her room to change out of her looser clothes into her formal military outfit.

On the brink of noon, she finds herself walking side-by-side with Sokka and Aritak, making the long trek to the community meeting hall on foot instead of in the palace carriages that are driven by waterbenders. They pass through the tundra that separates the palace from the main city, the middle-class housing, and the market before arriving in the heart of the city. The main city square is littered with buildings like the mailing center and formal complaints office, and the meeting hall lies at the edge of it all.

They enter to a cacophony of chatter. "There's a lot of people today," Katara says as eyes fall on them, trying to make her lips move as little as possible. The hall is completely filled.

Sokka smiles at the people gathered around as they cut their way through the middle of the vast hall. It's built to hold five thousand people, a little less than half of the population of the Southern City - but enough to hold everyone who cares enough to attend - and is like a standing theater, with seats climbing the walls and facing the podium at front. Bigger announcements fill up the entire city square.

"I guess word got around fast," her brother whispers grimly.

Aritak peels away from them three-quarters of the way through and stands next to the rest of the military officers. Katara is on Sokka's heels as he takes his place at the podium.

"Good afternoon, fellow citizens of the Southern City. As you may have already heard, an attack was launched by Fire rebels on a tax collection building in the Emerald colony. The building was burned down. Though the Emerald colony belongs to the Northern City, one of our units of soldiers was moved to the colony by a false order," he says, his voice exuding an authority that Katara didn't know he had in him.

"There was one fatality on the North's side and while there were injuries on our side, everyone is recovering well. We have launched an investigation into the incident."

People start murmuring and mumbling and the sheer amount of voices makes the collective sound hum in Katara's bones. Questions are shouted out and Katara and Sokka take turns answering the ones that are repeated the most.

"Why did the unit follow the false order?"

"It looked like an authentic order from the Southern City."

"How many injured men and women?"

"Nine."

"Is the North behind this?" is the prevalent question, the one that people have seemed to think the most about, and Katara and Sokka do their best to quash the embers of resentment against the North.

"Although someone from the North may have been involved, we don't have concrete evidence yet," Sokka says carefully. And Katara adds, "It is just as likely that someone from the South was able to forge the document."

The disgruntled talking that follows says that few people are convinced.

By the end of the session Katara feels mentally drained but she notes as she exits alongside her brother that the people don't seem to completely hate them, which is more than she could've hoped for.

-O-

"Do you know how to open this?" the waterbender asks, holding up a thin book in the dim light. Zuko squints at it, not really seeing anything. The complete absence of the sun and freshly mottled flesh and burning inside of him has left him drained.

"Pass it to me," he says, his voice tired. At the distrust in the girl's eyes he says, "What am I going to do with it? Burn it?"

She passes it through.

He examines the lock on the front of the book and huffs out a breath. It's one of the simplest of Fire Nation lock mechanisms; all you need is to bend a flame into the small keyhole and it will unlock. The trick with this one, though, is that there are two minuscule keyholes that'll need the thinnest of steady flames.

"I can open it," he says finally. The waterbender leans slightly forward. "But I want to go out into a bigger space." She leans back, and gestures for him to hand the book back. He leaves out the part where he'll need his bending.

She looks down at the lock in silence for a few moments as if weighing its value and then looks back up. "Fine. Get up."

Zuko braces his arm on the wall behind him for support and hauls himself to his feet. The movement sends a flash of pain rippling through his body. The waterbender unlocks the cell's door and he steps through, his legs aching with fever.

The girl leads him down the hallway and when they reach the double doors, the guard behind her says, incredulous, "Lady Katara?"

She glances back briefly. "I'll just be taking him to one of the training chambers. Do you have a blindfold, by any chance?"

He hesitantly produces one from one of his pockets, and Zuko barely registers her speaking behind him, a scowl in her voice, "Bend down, firebender." He complies and feels the fabric slip over his eyes.

They walk further and he hears two other guards say something behind him and the girl says something back but he barely pays attention to them. He focuses on his feet and the direction that they're heading in.

Straight, left, right, right, up a staircase, straight, left.

He hears a door being pushed open and then the waterbender is tugging the blindfold off of him. He looks around, momentarily disoriented, at the wide space and high ceiling of the room, and then at the various weapons stored in shelves against one wall.

"I could kill you," Zuko says, eyes trailing to what look like sheathed dao swords, and he suddenly itches to hold them in his hands. How long has it been since he's held his own swords?

"You won't be able to," the waterbender says flippantly. She's only brought the one book with her today so when she sits on a bench, watching him pace the length of the chamber, she looks exceptionally bored.

What was a dull ache in Zuko's legs becomes a sharp stab every time he takes a step, and after a little while, he gives up on walking and instead starts gingerly stretching out his stiff limbs. He ignores the hot flashes of pain running through his left arm and goes through the sets of stretches he used do with Uncle out of habit.

"Did they bring you salve?" the waterbender asks suddenly.

"What?"

"When they interrogated you, did they give you any salve for your arm?"

"Would it look like this if they had?"

The girl clenches her jaw and then bites her lip, considering something. After a few more moments, she stands and says, "I'm going lessen the infection."

Before Zuko can stop himself he hisses, "I don't need your help."

The waterbender narrows her eyes and shrugs, settling back into her spot on the bench and immediately Zuko thinks that he probably should've let her ease the infection. But he will not ask her for anything. He goes through some basic firebending stances, the movements strange without the flow of chi and fire. Once he's finished he looks up to see the waterbender's eyes on him.

"We're going back," she says, getting up with blindfold in hand, and he's in darkness again.

On the way to his cell Zuko gets the feeling that even the little physical exertion he just had was too much for his body to handle in its state, because he suddenly he's uncomfortably warm and his vision is rapidly blurring in and out of focus.

"Stop it," the waterbender hisses. He's veering slightly to the left and he thinks his legs might give.

"I need a second," he says, reaching his hand out for the nearest wall. Once he makes contact with a surface he stands in place, his breath shallow.

"Move," the girl says sharply, somewhere to his left. Something urgent is creeping into her voice and Zuko hears footsteps behind them. He thinks he vaguely hears her repeat her command and a second he's being pulled along roughly, bouts of pain shooting through his arm. He grits his teeth. She's dragging him by his left arm.

Once they've descended the staircase she lets go and prods him along until he feels a rush of air as the doors to the interrogation wing (hall?) open and then the blindfold's off and he's back in the cell.

There's a faint popping sound and then there's a cool touch on his arm, _water_ , and his eyes close.


	7. ready

_first we learned to walk_

_then learned to scream_

_¬real world by the all-american rejects_

* * *

Sokka's eyes looks alarmingly similar to their father's, bright blue dulled by tiredness, and it is only the fourth day of having the city's weight on him.

"They think General Irek forged the order," he says, leaning his head back and slumping slightly in his chair.

"What?" Katara asks, eyes widening.

Sokka sighs. "I said, they think-"

"I know, I know; I meant why?"

His hands go to the stack on his desk and he pulls out a few sheets, pushing them towards Katara. "A lot of the evidence points to him."

Katara quickly glances over the lines and lines of documentation. "This is mostly witness accounts and a few rumors here and there. Is that solid enough to convict him?"

"All rumors have some truth," he says. "We know that better than anyone. The witnesses are all reliable."

"He helped us."

"It could've been for a cover."

"That's a lot of effort for a cover. I mean, in the end, he's done more good for the South than the North or Earth lands. What does that prove?"

"He's the only one besides Chief Arnook who had access to the generals' seal. Who else could've done it?"

"There's so many other people in their palace, Sokka. Someone else could've stolen it. We still haven't fully investigated our side either."

"I'm not happy with this, either, but I'm trying to look at the facts impartially and it makes sense."He inhales and exhales audibly. "You didn't even read the report. Look through it and then we can discuss this."

Katara picks the papers up. "I think I'll read it in my room."

"Be careful with it."

"I will, I will."

The corridors are quiet and the morning sun seems to be caught in the stone of the halls, making them glimmer and glint in white and ice blue. Katara has only passed by two guards when she makes it to her room.

She lays out the packet of papers that is the report on her desk and starts reading carefully through it. The investigators Sokka sent have done a thorough job, considering the short amount of time that they've had.

General Irek is the only one with access to the copy of the Southern generals' stamp besides Chief Arnook along with access to palace messenger hawks.

The general was seen on the days surrounding the incident around the room containing the stamp. He requested Chief Arnook to give him the key to the safe holding the stamp a day before the incident to send out a message that General Norr of the Southern City requested General Irek to send. In the margin, there's a note in Sokka's handwriting that says that General Norr's already been cleared.

According to several witnesses (see end page for detailed list), General Irek had taken several maps of the Emerald Colony a few weeks before the incident from the palace's library, which were found with notes in his handwriting during a search of his study at the palace.

Several witnesses can confirm seeing General Irek send a message by messenger hawk to a location in the Fire colonies, although no witnesses were sure as to exactly where the message was headed.

Each of the points is backed up by witness interviews, palace guards' reports, and bits of physical evidence. Katara feels sick on the way back to Sokka's study.

"I don't want it to be him," she says, handing the bundle back to him. He looks at it dully and gestures for her to leave it on the desk.

"I don't think any of us do. If this is true, it'll screw up plenty of things."

"Have the Northerners sent their own investigators here?"

"Not yet, but they will. Our investigators still haven't presented their conclusion to Chief Arnook. It's one thing to accuse any old officer of something like this, but General Irek's the second-in-command to Chief Arnook. It can't be taken lightly," Sokka says. "We have to be completely sure."

"Are we still waiting until Dad gets back to make an announcement to the other officers?"

"Yeah." A pause, then, "There's a huge mess waiting for him back here."

"No way, Detective Sokka," Katara says, although her words lack any bite. "I guess I'll get going then. Is there anything I can do?"

"I got a message from Aikana. She's coming right after lunch."

"What? I told her not to." Katara looks at him. "You called her over," she says accusingly. "But I have work and-"

Sokka waves a hand. "Consider it an hour off. You don't have a committee meeting, do you?"

"No, but-"

"Then take a break," he says. "Besides, she'll be pretty pissed if you don't show up."

"I can just send her a message to tell her to forget it."

"Katara."

She sighs. "Okay. Thanks, I guess."

"Aw, come on. Show a bit more enthusiasm."

Katara sticks out her tongue at him and the sound of his laughter follows her out the door.

Like Sokka said, Aikana is waiting for her in their usual training chamber right around noon, and Katara feels her mood start to lift at the prospect of doing nothing but bending for an hour.

"How's our temporary chief holding up?" she asks, standing up from her spot on a bench once Katara enters.

"Pretty good," Katara says, and the words taste only half-true in her mouth. Something in her tells her that even though Sokka and her have been handling things okay, but no matter how much effort they put into this, there is nothing her father will be able to bring them back to normalcy.

Katara sweeps her gaze across the chamber and notices the greenery at the back of the room. "Plants?"

Aikana nods. "Most waterbending masters consider mastery of plantbending to be part of mastering waterbending now. And since your goal is to train military recruits, you'll need to learn it either way."

Katara pales slightly but not for the reason Aikana thinks. The older woman sees the shift in her expression and says breezily, "Oh, don't worry at all. This'll be easy for you."

What looked like several smaller plants from far away, Katara realizes, is actually just two, sprawling plants; one with long vines and small leaves and the other with rougher stalks and wide fronds.

Aikana traces her fingers from the center of the plant with vines out to its leaves, explaining how water flows from the roots and through the whole plant, and pointing out places where the flow is strongest.

"Those are the places you need to focus on," she says, and then holds out both hands and curls her fingers, making the vines move upwards. "From there, it's easier to gain control over all of the water in the plant."

Katara is able to manipulate the vines on her first try, albeit not with total control, and she wonders if it is as easy to manipulate someone's veins. Once she can guide the vines to wrap loosely around Aikana's wrist, they move onto the coarser plant, whose flow of water is more constricted.

"With these kinds of plants, you really just have to grip the water in the roots and try to sense their flow. They're not very useful, though, and usually if soldiers need to use them, they'll just take the water out of them."

Aikana lets Katara trace the tiny waterways in the stalks and then shows, with a single stalk, how to take the water out. Katara watches her teacher narrows her hands, as if pinching something, and then splays her fingers quickly. A spoonful of water bursts out.

"Getting water from a single stalk can take years of precision control. Just try to get the water from the whole plant."

Katara reaches out her hands and pushes her fingers together, feeling the water's movements, and then pulls, and enough water to create a decent-sized ice dagger rips out. The plant withers into a dry heap.

"Do you think, that if someone was powerful enough, they could control someone's blood in the same way?" Katara asks, keeping her tone light and careless, like it's something that's just crossed her.

Aikana frowns at her. "I've never thought about it, but I don't think so - well, under a full moon, maybe. That would be dark power, though. I don't think anyone would want that."

Katara doesn't mention it again.

-O-

"I'll need my bending to open it," the prince says, his arms lazily crossed over his chest. He looks less cadaverous and healthier than the day before. The infection still festers beneath his skin; his arm is yet a reddish color, dappled with purple, but it's lowered enough that his body can heal it on its own.

"Why do you need your bending?"

The firebender holds up the book and the lantern's glow is thrown across the cover. "Do you see the two keyholes?"

Katara nods.

"You have to bend fire into both of them at the same time. There's a mechanism that's unlatched by the flames."

Something lifts in Katara and she holds out her hand to the prince. He hands her the book and she starts to turn away.

"Where are you going?" he asks, amusement in his voice, like he's watching a child conduct a silly experiment.

"To find matches," she says, and ignores his smirk.

In her room, she strikes two matches against the rough side of their paper box, and holds them up to the keyholes. Her heart starts to race when she hears a click and she immediately blows out the flames. Katara's fingers trace the sliver of freed space in the lock, but when she tries to pry the metal apart, it doesn't give and stays stuck in its quarter-unlocked state.

Her excitement is not dulled, though, and she lights up two more matches, holding them the same way she did before but she doesn't hear another telling click. She lights another pair of matches when the flames almost touch her fingers, and another and another until there's only six left in the box.

"Come on," she mutters, grabbing a metal ruler and jamming it into the gap. The lock stays a quarter open. She puts more force into the ruler until it slips against the metal and the lock clicks fully shut again.

Six matches later all she has to show for her efforts is a few charred page edges and a pile of blackened twigs.

-O-

Private Urago pauses in the middle of his sentence as the door to the room starts to swing open and the water hanging above Zuko's mouth pulls away, and he sits up quickly, gasping for air. His pulse is too-fast and he tries to erase the phantom sensation of drowning. He braces his hands on his knees and tries to slow his breathing.

They've been getting creative with their torture. Today was a new trick, where the waterbender under Urago's command hovers a sheet of water just above Zuko's body, and presses it slowly closer, to create the illusion of drowning.

"How's our favorite prince been holding up?"

Zuko finally turns his head towards the door and a bitter taste fills his mouth upon seeing the new face. "I've been doing fine, thank you for asking, Admiral Hahn."

"I see you haven't been cooperating with your interrogators."

"Aren't you a bit slow on the uptake?"

The admiral's eyes narrow. "Talking like that isn't going to get you anywhere."

"No, it won't. But it's entertaining."

"I'd just like to inform you that your fellow firebenders have proven to be useless in interrogations and are likely to be executed. Unless, of course, you give up some useful information."

Zuko's heart rate quickens, making his work to bring it down useless. "I already gave you information."

"Not enough, I'm afraid. Quit holding back and we'll spare your companions."

"You'd really kill a half-dozen people in the name of intimidating me?"

Hahn smirks. "We've done worse."

"You bastard," he says through gritted teeth, angry heat flushing him.

"But the real bastard is you, Prince Zuko, no?" Hahn kneels down and meets Zuko's eyes. "Your own father never had any faith in you. Technically, your equally tied-up sister is the true heir to the non-existent Fire throne, isn't she? You're the bastard child of a fallen nation. What do you have left to protect by withholding information? What honor does your name have left?"

Zuko's blood boils. "Fuck you," he hisses, and despite the new opens cuts on his back and arms, lunges towards the man in front of him. There is an immediate flurry of footsteps and he's pulled away just a moment after his hands make fleeting contact with his throat.

"How savage of you," he says coolly, straightening his collar and standing up. Zuko is still tense; his arms in the grip of Private Urago and the waterbender. "You know, maybe you're right. There are better ways to break you down. Private Urago, retrieve a whip. I'll be waiting here."

Urago's grip on Zuko's arm falters. "Admiral, are you-"

"That was an order."

Zuko is dropped to the floor as both Urago and the waterbender move away at once.

"You've already been torturing me. This isn't going to make any difference," Zuko says, watching Urago's retreating back.

Admiral Hahn shakes his head. Urago returns with the whip and Zuko is frozen in place by the waterbender and offers no resistance. He has taken a million beatings before and he can take a million more but he will not break.

"Fifty lashes," the admiral says, "should do you good."

Zuko has to keep himself from pitching forward with the first lash hits his back. He hadn't gotten a good look at it before but it feels like it has multiple tongues, maybe five, each slightly barbed.

"Fifty lashes, Admiral; I don't believe-"

"You are dismissed, Private Urago."

"Admiral-"

"You heard what I said."

There is a moment, and then Zuko hears retreating footsteps. The waterbender stays.

The whip comes down again and Zuko's jaw clamps shut. With the next lashes pain sears and bubbles across his back and he feels a nauseating mix of uncomfortable heat and freezing cold; the blood pooling at his back meets the frigid air of his cell and he swears it turns to red ice, and the remnants of fever from his infected arm keep burning through his system.

Around fifteen lashes, he can't stop his chin from touching the floor, and the admiral barks something out at the waterbender and a small column of ice pushes suddenly at his abdomen and forces him up.

Around twenty lashes, the waterbender says something, sounding uncomfortable, but he is ignored.

Around twenty-five, Zuko feels a familiar black pull on his consciousness but pushes it to the edges of his vision.

Around twenty-seven, the image of the ice-covered floor in front of him starts to blur.

Around thirty, water stings Zuko's eyes against his will, and his back is being pulled apart and stitched back together again and some cuts feel like they're down to the bone. His vision is filled with reds and oranges, pierced by white-blues, and he imagines Admiral Hahn burning and struck by lightening through the heart.

Around thirty-three, he can't feel anything; not his back not his frozen abdomen not his frozen knees not his frozen burning body. There is a break in the whipping, just long enough that the soreness and stinging aftermath starts to set in, and then it resumes.

Around thirty-five, there is a distant rumble of conversation that he trains all of his energy on to keep him from slipping away in the returned tide of black.

Around forty, the door pushes open and someone asks, "What are you doing, Hahn?"

"Katara."

"Does Sokka know about this? Aritak?"

"No. The prince tried to attack me and I decided on a suitable punishment."

"You have to bring this to Sokka first, to-"

"I think I have the right to discipline the prisoner."

"You get that privilege once you bring your complaint to the chief of the city, and since he is not here, you go to either me or Sokka. You do not take the situation entirely into your own hands; I don't care if you're-"

"It's only fifty lashes, Katara; there's no need to create such a fuss. He's a prisoner-"

"-who's more useful to us alive than dead. Stop this right now." There's a moment of silence, and then, "Put down the whip, Hahn. You're dismissed."

There is a flurry of footsteps and belatedly Zuko realizes it is the other waterbender who left.

There's a dull metallic thud a few seconds after. The ice holding him up melts to water, slowly, lowering him to the ground, and Zuko barely manages to raise his head. The waterbending girl is standing across from Admiral Hahn, glaring at him.

"Get a healer to him. This was uncalled for. I thought that you of all people would be able to better manage their anger."

"This wasn't some sort of anger management mechanism, Katara. Stop painting this like that."

"I don't think a firebender who can't even bend posed any threat to you. Get a healer. I was supposed to ask him questions but you've just set me back a day. I'm leaving."

"You're a healer, aren't you? Take care of him yourself."

The next words sound like they come from between clenched teeth. "If you're going to such a child, then I will."

More footsteps then, one person towards Zuko and one away from him. Zuko lets his head fall to the floor and he clenches his fists as if that can ease the burning on his back. There's a pop and then the sound of moving water, and Zuko can't bite back a curse as a cool touch meets his sizzling flesh.

"You're awake," the girl says, sounding startled, momentarily withdrawing her hands, but the water returns a heartbeat later.

She says nothing for the rest of the time and leaves a few minutes later.

-O-

When Katara looks briefly up from her papers, the firebender looks lost in thought, staring intently at something across the room. She follows his gaze to an abandoned game of Pai Sho; two short, neat towers of tiles on either side of the board with others scattered on top.

"Do you play?" Katara asks, wondering what his fascination with the game is.

His eyes snap towards her. "What?"

"You were staring at the game for a pretty long time."

The firebender's expression hardens. "It was nothing."

He slips easily into his bending forms, like he had the last time they were in the training chamber. Katara tries to look like she's keeping her attention on the papers in her hands while she glances up every few seconds, looking for a rivulet of smoke or lick of orange.

It comes when he throws a punch and a weak burst of fire follows the motion of his fist. He looks dumbfounded for a moment and looks at his hands, blinking, but then the corners of his lips wrinkle, and he throws another flame, and another, and another; all of which travel but a foot before dissipating into the air.

"You weren't able to open the book," he says finally, turning to Katara.

Katara feels a scowl threaten to drag down the corners of her mouth when she hears the smirk in his tone. "No, I wasn't."

She starts to hand the book to him but he stops her, saying, "I think it'll be easier if you hold it up."

He inhales deeply and when he exhales, two thin flames appear on the index finger of both of his hands. Katara watches, mesmerized by the glow, as he carefully brings the fire up to the lock. One two three four five six seven seconds pass until there's a click, and the prince immediately extinguishes the flames.

Katara opens the cover and start to skim through the pages, catching words like flying, cow, killed, boy, blue, tribe, organization, ice. There are notes scattered here and there in rushed writing, but Katara can't make out what they say.

She sees glows of orange and red in her periphery as the firebender goes through forms, and she keeps one hand hovering over her waterskin, just in case.

The book in the same archaic style that the other document was written in. It's nothing she'll be able to translate herself and she sighs, irritated.

She's managed to translate three other documents she thought might be important, but they all turned out to be accounts of different events in the war. Not entirely useless to her, per se, since she actually enjoys reading about history, but nothing that will be deemed useful by her father, and he'll be back in three days.

If Hahn hadn't taken it upon himself to beat the firebender into uselessness the day before, she could've gotten a good start on the book she holds now.

"Back to the cell now," she says, having a list of questions in her mind already, but then glances over at the Pai Sho table. When the firebender starts to move towards her, wisps of smoke fading into the air behind him, she stands and says, "Actually, sit down at the Pai Sho table. I can write on there better."

When they're sitting across from each other, an array of papers and the book between them, Katara picks a page in the middle of the book to translate and starts writing down all of the words she doesn't know. The prince fiddles with a few of the tiles, running his fingers over their surfaces.

"What's with your people's fixation with Agni Kais?" Katara asks, when she realizes the page she's reading is about yet another one of the fights.

"They're duels of honor," the prince says, his expression darkening.

"I know that, but why are resorted to so much? I've read about at least thirty of them, and that's only the ones that were recorded in the documents."

"It's a way to resolve conflict," he says, and then narrows his eyes at her expression. "What? Stories of Water Empire duels also pass through the colonies and Earth lands. It's not as if you're above this."

Katara shakes her head. "We talk things out, instead of throwing fire in each other's faces. I think there's been nine duels in both the North and South since I was born."

"Words can be twisted. In an Agni Kai, you either win or lose. When it comes down to honor, it's the cleanest way to settle things."

"Honor," Katara scoffs. "There are other ways to keep up honor."

"I wouldn't expect you to understand," the firebender says, and starts idly arranging the tiles in new stacks.

-O-

The moon is a silver coin in the sky and Katara cannot sleep.

She bends the water in the cup on her nightstand like she always does at this time of month, turning it into ice, then snow; steam, and condensing it back into its original form. Usually, this helps her, but her mind keep wandering and she feels restless when she lays her head on her pillow. Finally, she gives up, and pads toward her window, that faces the empty. The moon's light sifts in.

Katara looks down at her arm and traces the a path from her elbow to her wrist. Having power over someone else's blood is wrong, but maybe if she tries it on herself, she can put the morbid curiosity that nags at her despite everything at ease and forget about the stupid document.

She closes her eyes and imagines her veins, like the a plant's stalk, pushing blood out from her heart and up and through into her arms. She moves trembling fingers along where she thinks her veins should be, trying to get a grasp on her flow of blood.

A few minutes pass, and she can't take hold of it, and after another several tries she starts to think, with relief, that maybe bloodbending isn't possible after all, or maybe she's just not powerful enough for it; either way, it sits fine with her.

On what she tells herself is her last shot, her whole arm seizes up and her blood strains against her skin and towards her curled right hand. Katara immediately drops her hand, extracting her grip, her breath coming faster.

She makes her arm go as limp as possible and grips her own blood again, and it is the strangest feeling, of her getting her own blood to work against her, and ice cold seeps into her veins until it's almost unbearable. She curls the fingers of her right hand and pulls gently, like she did with the plant, and her arm rises a few inches up. Katara lets go of her grip and goes back to bending the cup of water on her nightstand, her hands shaking.

She doesn't know why she thought this would help.

-O-

"Are you okay?" Aritak asks softly. "You look tired."

"It's nothing," Katara says.

"Get outside, get some fresh air. Do something with Raina. You'll feel better," he says, gently nudging her shoulder.

"I'm fine, really. Just two more days now, anyway."

Dark circles rim her eyes and her skin is paler than it usually is, but she feels strangely awake. Her veins buzz.

"I'm sure Lady Katara already knows this," General Torok says from the head of the table, "but I thought that everyone else might like to know. General Irek is one of the main people under suspicion for forging the order. We might want to reconsider how we take in the reports that we've been studying written by him."

"Who are the others under suspicion?" Private Urago asks, his pale skin made paler through the sunlight thrown across his face by a window.

General Torok looks over at Katara, and she says, "There are three others who are currently being investigated, but General Irek has the most evidence against him." Private Urago nods, looking less disturbed than the rest.

"Well, let's bring out the maps, then," Private Kira says, pushing back her chair.

They spread out the pages and add a new key to their color code: red for betrayal.

-O-

Zuko turns over the Pai Sho tile in his hand, looking at the unfamiliar symbol inked onto it, and then adds it to his growing tower of tiles on the table in front of him. He uses them like a child would use wooden building blocks, pretending that he's building cities. The waterbending girl sits in front of him, rapidly copying Fire dialect into modern language, and reading out words every few minutes as per the past six days.

He doesn't even know why he's helping her. Some part of him is hanging onto the absurd hope that he can find something that will be useful to him, or at least whatever his father had been looking for when he'd risked taking the whole family back to Caldera.

" _Oshuwa_?" the girl says.

"Seized. As in, 'he was seized with fear'."

"How would say it as in 'they seized the city'?"

" _Arushuwa_."

And that is the extent of the noise in the training chamber.

His bending is gone again, as expected, since right after he was lead back to his cell the day before he was given a glass of water with the familiar bitter taste of the suppressant. The girl has kept him here longer than any other day; long enough for him to feel noon fade into near-twilight, and he watches her frantic writing with mild interest.

"Longer hours today?" he says, when he's finally tired of fiddling with the tiles.

"You should be grateful," she says without looking up.

He scowls at her bent head and gets up again, taking another lap around the training chamber. He pauses at the shelves full of weapons, looking carefully over all of them.

It would be so easy to kill her. Even with her bending, it would only take some swings of the dao swords; maybe a few daggers, if she freezes up the swords. Eventually, though, he'd overpower her and he could slit her throat or stab her straight through the heart. He entertains this scenario.

And what would happen then? He'd probably be executed, which wouldn't do much good. The whole purpose of him coming here was to stay in the palace and stay alive. But, if he knew that killing the girl would help somehow, he'd do without hesitation. His whole life has revolved around this past month and the coming months.

He feels a prickle at his back, like he's being watched, and turns around to see the waterbender's ice eyes on him.

"Planning to kill me?" she says dryly.

"You're not worth the trouble," he says truthfully, turning back. He lingers by the weapons shelves for a few moments longer before walking back across the chamber and settling down at the Pai Sho table. He picks up a tile out of habit and turns it in his palm. "How do you play Pai Sho without white jade tiles?"

"I've never used a white jade tile in Pai Sho," the girl says, glancing up briefly. Her head tilts back down. "So you play."

"I don't know anyone who doesn't," he bites, looking up at the ceiling. He is reminded of nights with Uncle in strange towns and cities, gambling for food or one more shot of cheap Earth liquor.

He starts to dissemble his tile towers and arranges them on the half of the board that isn't covered in parchment in the starting positions for the tiles, guessing what the unfamiliar tiles' equivalents are to what he knows. Zuko can feel that the sun is halfway gone from the sky.

"I've read the rules of the Fire version of Pai Sho," the girl says, the hand that holds her pen stilling. "The basics are the same, it's just the tiles that are different."

Zuko's lips curl in a near-scowl. "I've never really played the Fire version, since my home was destroyed years ago."

The waterbender's features harden. "Your ancestors destroyed themselves."

"Your ancestors turned the Fire Nation into rubble. You killed thousands-"

"And your ancestors didn't? You killed all of the airbenders, just because your grandfather or great-grandfather was a delusional tyrant-"

"-and now? You treat my people like they're not even human-"

"-fucking ended the Avatar cycle. I will not argue with a petty child. You're just as delusional as the rest of your family."

The waterbender neatly gathers her papers in a stack and puts them beside her. "You know what? Let's play one game of Pai Sho. Think of it like an Agni Kai or whatever you want, a duel for your non-existent honor. Maybe that'll put your childishness at ease like it did for your people in the old days."

Zuko's jaw twitches but he says, "You do not want to play with me."

The girl smiles. "I'll even give you a practice round, to make the loss hurt a bit less." She rapidly sets up the tiles, in a formation similar to the one Zuko is used to, and he sets up his own tiles accordingly.

They play; the girl correcting his moves in a clipped tone to fit the Water version of the game.

When they play a second round, Zuko wins easily, playing exactly along the waterbender's rules. She frowns down at the few remaining tiles on the board. "You cheated, didn't you?" she says, incredulous, but he knows she knows he didn't.

Zuko smirks. "Are we done?"

She starts arranging the tiles quickly again. "One more round and then you're back to your cell."

"What are the stakes this time?"

The waterbender looks up. "Nothing."

"That's not very interesting, is it?"

She laughs impudently and gathers her papers, standing up. "What can I take from an imprisoned firebender who has nothing to lose?"

Zuko unfolds his legs from beneath him and mirrors her. She hands him the cloth bag they'd put on him the day he'd arrived instead of a blindfold, and he slips it over his head.


	8. set

_in these four walls my thoughts seem to wander_

_to some distant century_

_-skulls by bastille_

* * *

"And the stakes?" Zuko says, pushing his tiles into the proper places.

"I didn't know what to use," the girl says, putting a carved white box on the table. She pushes it towards Zuko and he opens the wood to find gambling pieces.

He holds one of the thin disks in between his fingers. "These have no value."

"Well, that's what we usually use here."

"But each gambling piece is supposed to be worth a certain amount of money to you. I have no money to give."

"Fine," she huffs. "How about the winner gets to ask the other person one question?"

He smirks. "There's no guarantee for a truthful answer."

"I guess we'll just have to have that much trust in each other, won't we?"

"I guess we will," he says, and makes the first move.

The game goes on for longer this time. The waterbender picks up quicker on the tricks Zuko's learned over the years from Uncle than expected, but at the end, he still emerges the winner. She frowns down at the tiles again as if they've done her a huge disservice.

Zuko looks at the game board for a few moments, wondering what to ask.

"Are the firebenders who were captured with me alive?"

"Yes," she says, her voice clipped. She's already rearranging the tiles.

"That's not a full answer."

"I never specified how long the response needed to be."

"If I had answered a question you had like that, would you be happy with the answer?" he says, trying to keep the venom out of his voice. The least she can do is tell him what's happening with them.

She's silent for a moment, but then says, "They're being held in cells further underground. They were interrogated the same way you were but we're not going to let anyone die."

He fiddles with the tile in his hand. "Another round?"

Zuko wins again.

This question comes quicker. "Is my father dead?"

He'd never thought to ask before, and honestly, he doesn't really _care_. He's just the slightest bit curious.

The waterbender looks surprised. "You don't know?"

"Would I ask if I knew?"

She shoots him a look and says, "He's been in a prison in a secret location in the North for the past six years. He's not dead."

"Okay," Zuko says, not knowing how he should be reacting. Should he be upset? Happy? There's a heavy silence, punctuated by the _tap tap_ of tiles being piled onto each other, and then the papers reappear on the table.

" _Yajirushu?_ "

"Arrow."

" _Shinjera?_ "

"Unbelievable."

-O-

"So, I was thinking that we could go out to a dressmaker once your dad's back," Raina says, watching as Katara looks through the sketches on the table.

"You're amazing," Katara says, tracing her eyes along the clean strokes and inked details of the designs. "These are beautiful. Really, Raina."

Raina shrugs, pinking slightly. "I had a lot more time to practice while Dad was gone, since Mom lets me skimp out on my training."

Katara sets aside a few sketches, avoiding the one that looks like it has had the most effort put into it. Raina would let her have the design in a heartbeat but she can tell that her friend has her heart set on it already.

"I'll probably take one of these two," Katara says, finally narrowing down her choice. The two styles are unfamiliar but inked in with a familiar blue color.

"They're Fire Nation inspired," Raina says, reading Katara's mind, and Katara sees the influence. The dresses are jagged where they should've been soft. "Are you sure about these? I wasn't even going to show you them. I mean, it probably wouldn't look too good if you're wearing Fire clothes-"

"I doubt anyone will recognize them since they're in blue and silver," Katara says, and then frowns slightly. "The necklines, however-"

Raina laughs and snatches away the papers. "-are perfectly fine. They don't have to be up to your chin all of the time, Lady Katara."

Katara sighs, "Okay", deciding not to say anything for now, but fully intending on having a word with the dressmaker once they get to that stage. "Thanks, Raina. You're brilliant.

"It was nothing," she says dismissively. "I wouldn't want you to embarrass yourself in front of everyone, would I?"

Katara makes a face. "My sense of fashion is perfectly fine."

"Who told you that? Sokka?"

"Sokka is actually a pretty good fashion judge, considering all of the girl he hangs around."

"True, true," Raina laughs. "So when do you need to get back to your chiefly duties?"

"I'll have to leave right before lunch."

"Come on, stay for lunch at least?"

Katara starts to gather the sketches into a neat pile. "I want to, but I have a meeting I need to go to."

-O-

"We're almost certain it was General Irek now," Sokka says, hands folded on the table and eyes trained on the person in front of him.

Katara leans back in her chair, the sound of flipping papers the only one in the room.

"The evidence is thorough," Hahn says, a frown in his voice. He glances up. "I know General Irek personally, though. His family is close with mine and I could never imagine him doing something like this. He's always been loyal."

"We don't have any other solid leads," Sokka says gently. "And all of the evidence is pretty clear. I still don't want to believe it myself."

Hahn looks up at the ceiling briefly and then at Sokka. "You'll need me to soften the blow."

"Yes."

"I want to launch my own investigation into this first."

"There are three simultaneous investigations right now," Katara says. "The best minds are already on the case. You'll have to put together your own team."

"I realize that."

Katara exchanges a glance with her brother.

"Our father will be back tomorrow. We'll give you our decision then," Sokka says, sounding like it's already a lost cause.

"Tell him that this is my contingency. I launch my own investigation, complete it, and then I'll mediate between the North and South. I won't do it otherwise," Hahn says, and Katara narrows her eyes at him. He _knows_ he's the only person who can do this.

"By the time you complete your investigation it'll be too late."

"I'll figure out something," Hahn says. "This is too clean-cut. I don't fully believe the findings."

"Our investigation teams-" Katara starts, but he cuts her off.

"I know; I don't doubt that this conclusion is what all of the investigators' work lead to, and I don't believe that it's not justified or well-researched. I just don't believe it's true."

The doubts Katara had from before return to her mind. _This is too clean-cut. I don't believe the findings._ _  
_

"Well, when you leave for the North, I'll come with you," Katara says, and she swears she hears a crack with the speed that Sokka turns his head towards her.

" _What?_ "

Hahn looks at her incredulously.

"Not to investigate," Katara says, rolling her eyes. "The ruling family's been long overdue for a visit to the North. I think I'll make the trip with Hahn as a diplomatic visit."

"You're kidding me," Sokka says, momentarily ignoring Hahn. His bore into her and see right through her thin facade. "You have other things to do, Katara, you can't get caught up in anything else."

"It's just a diplomatic visit."

"What're you planning?"

"Nothing."

Her brother turns away. "We'll tell you our father's decision tomorrow."

-O-

"These are the names, Lady Katara."

Katara takes the notebook from Wei's hands and skims through the short list.

Aritak, Hahn, Private Urago, Private Kira, Sokka, and herself. All of the visits were made during the scheduled interrogation times, and Private Kira had taken Private Urago's place on the interrogation team for a few days, so there's no ulterior motive there either.

Katara looks through it again.

There is _one_ visit, made by Hahn at late night. But he had mentioned it to Sokka beforehand, so he wasn't exactly sneaking around, but telling Sokka would also ensure that no one suspects him of anything. _  
_

All the more reason to go with him to the North, she supposes. If there's anything off with him she'll find out there.

"Thank you," she says, handing the notebook back. "Please tell the guards to keep recording visits."

"Will do," he says, and Katara takes off towards the storage closet full of the Fire library remains.

Katara sifts through the shelves of charred documents; carefully piling everything that looks the slightest bit promising into a bag she finds wedged in between the bookcases.

Her father returns in less than 24 hours and she has nothing to show him. He probably won't dispose of the documents, considering how he's always given in to Katara's whims before, but he'll certainly be watching her more carefully.

She'll just have to hide them in her room.

Once the bag is almost too heavy for her to carry she rearranges the shelves, trying to make it look as though nothing is missing (although it's not as if her father has been in here enough to know the shelves' arrangement), and then treks upstairs to her bedroom.

The moon is a sliver less than full, shining through the window as she opens her closet and puts books in between the formal clothes she hardly ever wears. Her father and Sokka sometimes stop by her room to grabs some paper or another from her desk, and she won't take the risk of putting the documents in the drawers there. Her dresses will have to do for now.

She keeps the book with the firebending lock under her pillow.

Like the night before she is restless; between the pull of the moon and the tugging at her veins to try bloodbending, _just one more time_ , she can't sleep. She wanders around her room until she finally gives in and tries the same trick as yesterday. Raising her arm through bloodbending is almost effortless, the movements fluid now instead of curled. Her fingers don't even tremble.

There's so much power, she thinks, that there must be a way to use it for good, instead of for controlling innocents like marionettes.

She sits on her bed, fiddling with the glass of water instead of her blood. Katara starts to coat her fingers in water and gets it glowing with healing to ease the tension in her temples when something occurs to her.

She goes to the heap of clothes lying on her desk chair, and digs out her formal military clothes. Her dagger is still attached to the waist of the outermost layer of clothing and she unsheaths it, taking a breath before running it lightly across her palm, making a thin, deep red cut.

"How do I do this?" she mumbles, holding her hand flat. She hovers her other hand over the cut, trying to force the blood to knit her skin back together. The red quivers but doesn't heal.

She tries again, beads of sweat appearing on her forehead, until her fingers start to shake. Blood continues to seep out of the cut. She ends up healing herself with water, a dull throb starting in the back of her head.

-O-

_Sit tight. We still need about a month. Make sure you keep giving up some information so you're not placed in solitary confinement or one of the remote prisons._

"How helpful," Zuko mutters, glaring down at the hurried, flourishing characters. He crumples the paper and then places it in his mouth, chewing it slowly and trying to ignore the bitter taste of the ink. It's the first note he's gotten in more than a week.

They're keeping in the dark, like always. Being imprisoned has given him too much time to think and now he wonders, again, if Azula is running some plot against him, even from her underground prison in the Northern tundra. It's not beyond her abilities.

Zuko gathers his growing hair in his hands, a messy shag, and clenches at it.

The door to his cell starts to open and the bruises on his flesh gain new life at the prospect of another hour of gaining new ones. It's only the waterbending girl, though.

She silently unlocks his cell and he stands up slowly, slipping the cloth bag she hands him over his own head. A few moments later, she moves forward to tighten the drawstrings and then steps back to let him walk forward first. He's memorized the path to the training chamber by now but he still hangs behind the girl after they pass through the double doors closing off the hallway.

The waterbender starts immediately setting up her papers on the Pai Sho table when they get there, and Zuko wanders the space, stretching. He gauges his strength and the degree of his cuts and bruises and decides to try the meager amount of acrobatics he can manage. He might give himself a concussion, but it'll be a change.

Zuko looks around and sees a few padded training mats hanging from a hook on the far wall. He crosses the room and takes one of them down. The girl looks up briefly, raising an eyebrow, but says nothing. He lays out the mat, making sure it is has enough of a grip on the floor to not slide out from under his feet, and then stands at the edge of it.

He throws his legs over his head, backwards, like he's been taught, and he ends with his nose smashed onto the mat. He lies blinking, momentarily disoriented, until a snort snaps him out of his reverie. When he turns a glare in the girl's direction, she's looking solemnly at her papers.

On his second try, he gets slightly further and lands on his forehead with a muffled, "Shit."

The next turn he lands on his feet with only a bit of stumbling and smiles victoriously. His arms ache but he backflips in a chain of three, the rush of adrenaline and air making up for the pain. He stands at the edge of the mat again, this time in the starting position for a front flip, but before he can launch himself forward the girl says, "Stop before you give yourself a head injury."

"I can manage myself, thanks," he snaps.

She rolls her eyes. "You're of no use to me if you can't even think straight. Put the mat back."

He scowls at her, making sure she sees, before he folds the mat and hangs it back on the hook.

" _Nisoinbe?_ "

"Buffalo? Maybe cow?"

He watches her struggle with some translation or another, and then says, "You know, if you'd just let me read the book directly, you'd be done with this in an hour."

She shoots him a scalding look. "I can manage myself, thanks," she says mockingly, and he shrugs.

Once she tires of her papers she starts setting up the Pai Sho tiles silently and he mirrors her.

"Don't get too used to this," she says, finishing early and watching him put the last of his tiles into their places, "I'm only doing this until I win."

"It's not like I'll miss it," he says. "You're an easy opponent. I guess I'll just enjoy watching you struggle until you give up."

Her eyes narrow.

As expected, he wins.

"I'll run out of questions at this rate," he smirks.

"Just ask something."

He hesitates. "Do you know anything about my mother?"

"Ursa?" the girl says, more to herself than him. "I'm pretty sure we completely lost track of her around the time your father was captured."

"She was never in the Water Cities?" he asks, surprised.

"No," she says, something in her expression going soft, and he looks away.

Zuko starts to rearrange the tiles again.

-O-

"Why are there two boats?" Katara says to Sokka. The sea sways in front of them. "And the second one is an Earth ship, no less."

He squints into the sunlight. "I don't know. But they have our insignia so Dad must've brought it."

The ships draw slowly closer and closer, until Sokka gives the order for the fenders to be prepared and then tied down. Once ropes secure the ships to the docks, their father unboards the ship, followed by an unfamiliar crew. Another blue-clothed crew starts to file out of the second Earth ship.

"How are my temporary replacements?" he says teasingly as he comes towards them. When he pulls Katara in for a hug she looks over his shoulder at the sole green-clothed figure among the Water crew coming out of the Earth ship.

"A prisoner?" Sokka says from behind her. Their father untangles himself from Katara, straightening to gesture towards the guards waiting at the palace's doors to escort everyone inside.

Katara starts to move as well but she's stopped by Hakoda's hand on her shoulder.

"Wait here for a minute. You and Sokka will escort him inside," her father says, nodding in the direction of the approaching Earth man. "Are all of the guest rooms clean?"

"Of course."

"Take him to the suite on the fourth floor, then, since it has a study attached."

"Who is he?" Sokka says, pasting on a smile as the man draws closer, surrounded by the Water crew.

"An ambassador. Or a delegate, of sorts. I'll explain later."

It isn't the _strangest_ thing to happen, Katara supposes. "His name?"

"Master Yu of Gaoling."

Katara nods, smiling out of habit when he comes close enough that she can discern his features. He is older than her father, with a short beard and the dark green eyes that are common in much of the Earth lands.

"Welcome, Master Yu," Sokka says before she can. He nods at out of respect and Master Yu bends at the waist.

"Thank you, Major Sokka."

"My brother and I will be escorting you to your accommodations," Katara says just as Sokka starts to walk towards the palace. She lingers in her place until Master Yu passes by her and then trails behind him, watching his back as they head up to the fourth floor of the palace.

Sokka and Katara exchange a glance once Yu's inside of the suite, and a silent mutual agreement is made to head straight for their father's study; the place he ends up first upon return no matter how far away his trip was.

When they're sitting in front of his desk, a steaming plate of food for their father sitting in between them, Katara opens her mouth to speak but Hakoda cuts her off, "I'll just explain from the beginning, okay?"

"I spent five of the days negotiating with Long Feng. The other two he insisted I go on a tour of Ba Sing Se," he says, and Sokka snorts. "He was stubborn. He said that he'll only pass the disarmament agreement if I agree to invest more into the Earth economy and bring in young people and train them for jobs here."

"The Earth economy is fine," Katara interrupts, and her father shakes his head slightly.

"On paper, everything seems fine except for some losses here and there. But Katara, if you saw the conditions in the smaller villages- there are raids from the Fire rebels on the edges of the Earth lands. Poorer people are robbed everyday. Our education system for the farmers and villagers is working fine, but none of them can find jobs because there aren't any to give."

"They get more than enough funding to help their economy already," she scoffs. "I had to do some of those calculations myself."

Hakoda shakes his head. "I know Long Feng is manipulative. I also thought it was another one of his ploys for free money, but I saw the conditions myself."

"That doesn't explain why the Yu guy's here," Sokka says.

"And he's from Gaoling, of all places," Katara adds. "We have Gaoling on high alert in the committee."

Their father frowns. "You should've sent me a message."

"I didn't know you were bringing back someone!"

"I know, I know; I should've sent notice. I only signed the terms on the last day, though, so I didn't have much time."

"The terms?" Katara says, raising an eyebrow. Her father sighs and pulls out a few sheets of paper. Katara and Sokka both skim through it quickly.

"I'm assuming these terms apply to the North as well?" Sokka says.

Hakoda nods. "Arnook's diplomats approved it with me."

_A minimum of 100 students aged 16-19 will be taken for apprenticeships/ training._

_One ambassador will be sent to the city to represent the Earth lands in *key (see footnotes) issues concerning the Earth lands._

_An amount of currency equal to five thousand (5,000) gold Earth coins will be given to the Earth lands every month._

"This isn't bad," Katara says, leaning back into her chair. "That's not a good thing. Long Feng would never settle for this."

"It took five days of negotiations."

"It's still seems too easy," she says, looking back down at the papers.

"Well, when are these students coming in?" Sokka asks.

"About a dozen are coming in two or three days. Some of our lieutenants are doing background checks on potential candidates right now."

"Does Long Feng have any say in who gets to come?"

"No. People who are interested sign up and go to our military bases for interviews and checks. I have military men and women there to select the best fits. I'd guess that Arnook will be doing something similar."

"Don't you see anything.. _off_ about this?"

"Believe me, Katara, I'm not that naive. There is something wrong; but if this fails, or something goes wrong, we do still have total power. We _could_ use force. But if Long Feng's placated by this-"

"-it's better than war. Of course."

"Did you get the message I sent about the investigation?" Sokka asks.

Their father nods. "And we're absolutely sure it was General Irek?"

"There are no other leads and the evidence is clear."

A sigh, and then, "Have you talked to Hahn yet?"

"Yeah, that's the problem. He wants to do his own investigation before he goes and talks to anyone up North about it."

"I didn't expect him to agree very easily. General Irek is like an uncle to him. Can he leave this week?"

"He's ready to leave at any time."

"How long?"

"He said a week would be enough."

"He has my permission then. He should leave tomorrow or the day after."

Katara clears her throat. "I want to go with him." Sokka huffs in annoyance.

Her father looks at her. "You have enough on your plate as it is. Besides, since when are you and Hahn friends?"

"We're not. But I thought it would be a good idea to have one of us visit the North as a diplomatic visit. You know, put on a good face before breaking the news."

"You mean you want to do your own snooping," Sokka says.

"I- something like that."

"No. Dad, you can't possibly-"

"Why?"

"You can't interfere with things. What if someone sees you sneaking around? What if the nobles start to notice that you're asking too many questions?"

"I'm always careful. You know that."

"Katara-"

"I'll stay with Yue most of the time. No one will say anything."

"Princess Yue probably has other things she needs to do."

"The Notherners don't let women do anything," Katara snaps. "I doubt she has any pressing duties."

"Hey," Sokka says; warning.

"You _know_ that they don't trust women with anything, I'm not saying anything about Yue-"

"Stop," Hakoda says, holding up a hand. "Let me think for a few minutes."

An immediate hush falls over both of them, and their gazes roam the room, waiting for their father to say something.

"You can go," he says eventually. "I'll put Sokka on your committee meetings for the days that both you and Hahn are gone."

Sokka groans. "A whole week of extra meetings?"

"No. Katara will go to the North with Hahn the day after tomorrow and come back after three days. Hahn will stay the whole week."

"I don't think three days is enough-"

"It has to be enough. Any longer and people will start wondering why you're staying so long."

"Okay. Thank you."

Sokka leans forward in his chair. "Dad, are you really letting her go? What if-"

"Even though she used it as an excuse, she's right. We _do_ need a diplomatic visit to the North sometime soon anyway, and since I can't go, Katara's the only other option."

Sokka looks offended. "Hey, I'm not _that_ bad at diplomacy."

"Yes, you are," Katara and Hakoda say simultaneously.

-O-

He wins again.

Katara grits her teeth in frustration. She's played Pai Sho her whole life; with everyone from merchants in the market and Earth visitors, to nobles and Chief Arnook, and more times than not, won.

And she can't win against one Fire peasant.

"Ask your question," she says, irked; leaning back and crossing her arms over her chest.

Her eyes start to trail to the book at her side. She has just a few more questions to ask before she can start piecing together everything with accuracy. And it's a good thing she's almost done, too, because she had to wait until late night today to sneak down to the interrogation cells now that her father's back.

The firebender looks down at the table for a few moments; thinking.

"Who are you betrothed to?" he asks, his voice just the faintest bit curious.

Katara's eyebrows furrow. "What?"

He looks irritated. "Your necklace. Or has the custom changed?"

"Oh." Katara's fingers automatically go to the pendant at her neck. "No one."

He shrugs and starts to stack the tiles again, and she continues quietly, "It belonged to my mother. She died when I was eight."

The firebender looks up again, something passing through his expression, but he doesn't say anything and instead nods once.

Katara reaches for the book and papers and places it on the table. Their little routine continues with silence punctuated by modern and Fire words, and by the time Katara has gotten down all of the definitions and phrases she'll need, it's much too late into the night and she leaves for the North tomorrow.

"I won't be coming for three or four days," she says, standing up with the book in hand. _Or maybe at all._

He glances up at her, snapped out of his thoughts. "Okay."

She slips the cloth bag over his head in the resumed silence.


End file.
